


The Cowardice of Lions

by Poetry



Series: Dæmorphing [9]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Alternate Universe - Daemon, Bechdel Test Pass, Book 22: The Solution, Daemons, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Moral Ambiguity, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Retelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-29
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:59:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of predators, prey, and the meaning of power: the dæmonverse guide to stopping a rogue Animorph.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. More Than a Lion

**Author's Note:**

> You may wonder where the Saddler subplot went. Well, in this 'verse, David was never going to be able to replace Saddler, because he couldn't impersonate Saddler's dæmon. So let's just say that Saddler has a horse dæmon, so he rides her instead of a bike, and voila, no bike accident.
> 
> Beta read by lit_luminary.

**Marco**

Her name was T'Shondra, and she had the most beautiful dæmon I've ever seen. 

Maybe you're thinking, “Marco's just exaggerating because he's got it bad for this girl.” Well, you're wrong. I did have it bad for this girl, but I'm not exaggerating. He had just settled as this huge moth, bigger than my hand, with a gorgeous geometric pattern of orange, white, and purple on his wings. I didn't know his name, but I hoped I'd get the chance to find out. 

Dia was perched on my shoulder, all dressed up as a sun-bright parakeet. I leaned casually against the locker next to hers. “Hi, T'Shondra,” I said. 

“Hi, Marco,” she said. 

Dia watched her dæmon, and I watched her. “You've got a beautiful form,” I said. 

Her hands flew to her waist self-consciously. “A beautiful _form_? Ugh, you are such a perv!” 

“That's not what I meant,” I said. “I meant your dæmon is – ” 

“Oh, yeah, sure, cover it up by saying you were talking about him. You're a pig, Marco.” 

“There's nothing I can say to save this conversation, is there?” 

“Nope.” 

So I walked away. What can you do? Sometimes you just have to cut your losses. At least I try, unlike a certain best friend of mine who just makes gooey eyes and pines. 

“What does it take to get a girl's attention anyway?” I muttered. 

“No idea. If a girl had said that to me, I'd be flattered,” said Dia. “Oh, _shit_.” 

No one hesitates when their dæmon starts cursing out of the blue like that. I followed Dia's line of sight down the hallway. That's when I saw it, too: the blue box. 

I'm great at plans. Give me time to think about it, and I can find the solutions to some seriously thorny problems. Trust me, it's been battle-tested. But when something totally random and crazy comes up out of nowhere and I have to make a snap decision, I end up doing some stupid crap. Like blurting out, “Yo!” 

The kid with the blue box turned around. Only then did I register what he looked like. Blond, brown-eyed, average size. His dæmon was looped around his waist and shoulders as an anaconda. That made Dia tighten her grip on my shoulder. She thinks of dangerous snakes as _her_ thing. 

“What?” he said. 

“Um... I don't know you, do I?” 

“I'm new.” 

“Ah.” My brain was a total blank. I wished Cassie had been the one to see the box. She would have known what to say to get him to give it to her. I couldn't think of anything. “My name's Marco,” I finally said. “And Diamanta.” 

“I'm David,” he said. He didn't volunteer his dæmon's name. Bad sign. Introducing your dæmon is a way to show you're friendly. 

“David! OK. Good name,” I said, saying words just to give myself more time to think. 

“Later,” he said. I swear his dæmon's eyes rolled at me. 

“Hey, David!” I yelled after him. “What's that blue thing?” Dia drew herself up on my shoulder, trying to look more dignified – as if that was going to work, after I'd already made a total fool of myself. 

He stopped, but didn't bother turning around. His dæmon watched me over his shoulder with yellow slit eyes. “I don't know. My dæmon spotted it while we were taking a shortcut through the construction site across from the mall. It was in a hole in the wall, in a cement block. Like it was put there or something.” 

I tried to think of something. I really did. But my grand plan was to try to buy it off him for $1.32. I told you, I need time to think. Our attempted theft of the blue box that night might have gone better if Jake and Cassie had gone instead of me and Rachel. Maybe they're better at that kind of thing. Or maybe they aren't. I just can't help thinking, looking back, how it all might have gone differently. If only Tobias had stolen the box instead of coming back to report to Jake. If only I had said something, anything, in that hallway that might have convinced David to give me the box. I know it's pointless, because that's not the way it went. But maybe if I understood what went wrong, it'd help prevent something like this from happening again. 

Anyway, the point is, Grand Theft Blue Box didn't go so well. And worse, I had to hear David tell me about it in the lunchroom the next day. 

When I saw him again, his dæmon was a pit bull. A _pit bull_. What with that, the form she took last night, and the anaconda, I couldn't help but wonder if he was compensating for something. Not to mention how utterly moronic it was to take a form like that in the middle of a middle school cafeteria. Have you ever been to a big public school's cafeteria? It's a zoo. Kids shoving each other out of their places in line, bullies roaming around looking for lunch money to steal, bird dæmons chasing each other around the ceiling, girls moving around in packs and sneering at anyone who gets in their way, and the poor dæmons who settled as anything bigger than a breadbox that can't fly or latch onto their humans trying to find a path through the crowd without bumping into anybody. Forcing other people to walk around you when you could be staying out of people's way as a bird or something means you are in need of an attitude adjustment. 

And before you look at me, let me add that Diamanta was a corn snake coiled around my arm, because she's not a dick. 

“You said your name is Marco, right?” 

“Yeah, Marco. David, right?” Play it cool. Play it cool. 

David stared at a steaming vat of green glop. “The food was better at my last school.” 

Was he trying to make me feel sorry for him? Fat chance, after last night. I cracked a joke. He didn't laugh. I'm usually good at that. 

"I don't have any friends here yet,” said David. “Something really weird happened to me yesterday. Very weird. Want to hang?" 

Yesterday in the hallway he couldn't wait to get away from me, and now he wanted to hang. Why couldn't he have been friendly when I asked for the blue box? If I didn't need to get on his good side, I would have told this kid to get lost pretty much as soon as I met him. “Sure. So what – " 

The lunch lady's duck dæmon clucked at me disapprovingly. “Cauliflower or green bean casserole?” she asked. “Come on, little Marco, let's keep it moving.” 

Little Marco? 

All right, fair enough. I cracked another joke, to no response from David. I have no idea how to deal with this guy. People are so much easier to deal with when they laugh at my jokes. It means they've got their guard down. 

Trying to find an empty table in my school cafeteria is like trying to play King of the Hill with five-year-olds on speed. Two kids in front of me started shoving each other, their dæmons snapping their jaws at each other, and David and I had to find another way around. His dæmon nearly got hit by a girl running, shrieking, past a table, and she was forced to take a form that took up less space, perching on his shoulder as a falcon. 

We sat down across from each other at an empty table. David speared a forkful of cauliflower and chewed. Then he told me about the attack by “trained birds.” Diamanta didn’t even look at him, scanning the cafeteria through her slit eyes, like we were bored. David sounded genuinely freaked out by what happened last night, and I couldn't blame him, but I still don't think it justified his reaction. 

“Two birds flew in my bedroom window and tried to get away with the box. So Kirianor turned into a wildcat and attacked them. That made them drop the box, but they got away.” 

Hard to forget _that_. David's dæmon didn't know that we were anything but birds, but from my perspective, it was super freaky to be clawed by a dæmon. I was sharing the osprey body with Dia, but it still felt wrong. We've been attacked by human-Controller dæmons before, but those dæmons didn't have any choice. They were puppets of the Yeerks. A dæmon attacking me of her own free will – well, it gave me the heebie jeebies. Rachel, too. 

_So her name is Kirianor, eh?_ Dia mused, giving the other dæmon a sidelong look. _Suddenly we're good enough pals to know her name. Guess we earned it, after getting_ mauled _by her._

_Well, we got away, didn't we? She didn't really know how to fight. Not like we do._

_Got away without the box. The Animorphs, brought low by a kid with a baseball bat. We are so lame._

“Trained birds?” I said. “Are you serious?” 

“Yeah. They had to be. One of them opened a sliding glass door.” 

“Why would anyone go to all the trouble of training birds just to steal some stupid box?” 

"I don't know. But it must be valuable, right? I'm going to try and sell it.” Kirianor's yellow falcon eyes lit as David went on. “I bet it's worth so much money. I could get my own Playstation. And my dad's wanted a new grill for ages. I could get one for him.” 

“Sell it where?” I said. 

“Online,” he said. 

Again, I can't help but wonder. What if I'd ditched school earlier instead of waiting to tell Jake? What if I hadn't bothered to get Ax and just unplugged David's computer myself? I made so many mistakes, early on. Mistakes we would all pay for later. 

But I guess it's no use asking “What if?” now. 

* * *

**Ax**

I stared as Marco withdrew the Escafil Device from David's backpack. My brother's Escafil Device. Elfangor had used it on the _arisths_ he had trained. He had held this blue box in his hand and asked my human friends to put a hand on each of its faces. He had died without giving away its secret to Visser Three. 

I had faced the Abomination once more today, and once more I had failed to avenge my brother. I stared at Elfangor's Escafil Device, longing to hold it. It was a foolish wish. The blue box did not hold any of his lost essence. It was identical to any other Escafil Device. It did not belong to me any more than it belonged to any of the other Animorphs. But still my human hands twitched with the held-back impulse to reach out and touch it. I wondered if Tobias, perched on my shoulder, noticed the subtle movement. 

I repressed my foolish impulse. Nonetheless, perhaps the device could still do what it was meant to do. What Elfangor had used it for. 

“There is, perhaps, an alternative,” I said. 

“What alternative?” Prince Jake asked. 

“We have the box. Box. Box-uh. We could use it. The box-uh.” 

The humans had clearly not even considered the possibility. They all reacted strongly, and mostly as I would have expected. Marco was immediately skeptical. Cassie was clearly excited about an alternative to leaving David to the Yeerks. Prince Jake and Tobias were thoughtful. So was Rachel, which I found surprising. Normally she likes to come to a firm decision as quickly as possible. 

I looked at the human who lay unconscious on the dirty ground. If I were in my own body, I wouldn't have been able to readily distinguish him from other humans. When I am my Andalite self, humans look similar to me. It has only been with practice and familiarity that I have come to view my human friends as distinct, as well as other humans I see regularly, such as Chapman and Visser Three in morph. In human morph, however, I could instinctively discern David. He had fair coloring, like Tobias, though his build was more solid, and the fine hairs around his eyes were very pale, almost translucent. His dæmon was wrapped around his neck, a dark furry creature with sharp teeth and claws. 

He seemed to me like a normal young human. He had seen the blue box as an opportunity to advance his interests. He had defended his home last night when Marco and Rachel had invaded it. He had been terribly frightened by Visser Three and his Hork-Bajir. I believe that most humans would have reacted to all of these events the same way he did. 

Would he make an effective addition to our team? It is not my place to judge a human's character. But in this case, my human friends were not well-equipped to make a judgment either. In my training as an _aristh,_ I had learned about guerrilla warfare strategy. Coordination and trust within guerrilla bands are paramount. 

It had been a combination of luck and desperate circumstance that had brought the Animorphs together as an effective team. David presented an unacceptable risk to our group's dynamic. Better to wait and watch, to take the time to choose the best possible additions to the Animorphs. 

However, it was not my place to state this opinion. “Prince Jake should decide,” I said, in agreement with Tobias. 

But Prince Jake decided that the responsibility should be collective in this case. That disquieted me. I did not think he was wrong to suggest a vote, but I do not like to interfere in human affairs. Surely the other Animorphs would understand David better than I. 

«Yes,» Tobias said. «Can't just leave him to Visser Three.» 

Tobias, my _shorm_ , is not the ruthless predator whose form he has adopted as his own. At his core, he is a storm petrel, a bird that spends months at sea, but always returns to the place of its birth to join its colony and raise families together. He is distant from other humans, yet deeply compassionate. It is not in his nature to abandon another to a cruel fate. I did not agree with him, but I respected his choice. 

“I vote yes,” Cassie said. “We have to make a leap of faith here and hope it will work out.” Though she looked at Prince Jake as she spoke, her dæmon, bat-formed on her shoulder, studied David intently. 

“I should not vote,” I said. “I follow Prince Jake. Jay-kuh.” 

Prince Jake shook his head. “"Nope. You are a part of the group, Ax. In battle, maybe there isn't time to vote on everything, but this is a democracy." 

I understood the concept of democracy, of course. It has much in common with the government of my homeworld, though we do not think of it in terms of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” To us, the People is a whole much greater than the sum of the individuals who comprise it, and to corrupt or suppress the will of the People is to corrupt the will of family and every other unit of society. Other Andalites might scoff, but I believe that our group, the Animorphs, has a will greater than the sum of its parts as well. So I said what I thought would best serve that will. 

“Then I vote no.” 

The humans seemed surprised. Perhaps they thought that I supported the idea simply because I proposed it. But I had suggested it as an option for Prince Jake, and out of respect for how my brother had put the Escafil Device to use. 

The Animorphs – the greater whole that we made up – decided, in the end, to give David the morphing power, and the terrible knowledge that came with it. But that did not make him part of the Animorphs. To merge with the consciousness of the group is a process that takes time, and is not always successful. 

Soon, we would see. 

* * *

**Marco**

David was subdued as we walked to my house from Cassie's barn. Being told that aliens are invading Earth and that they've taken your parents will do that to you. I hoped he'd stay quiet. I really didn't want to host this sleepover, but Jake asked me to, and I don't say no to Jake unless there's a seriously good reason. “This guy who just lost his parents to the Yeerks gives me the creeps” wasn't a good enough reason, though I almost said it to Jake anyway. So I was stuck with him for the night. 

I stopped by a pay phone, dropped in a quarter, and called home. “Hey, Dad.” 

“Hi, Marco. On your way home?” 

“Yup. Say, could you make something extra for dinner? There's this new guy at school I've been hanging out with, and he wanted to stay over tonight.” 

“Oh, you have a new friend?” My dad sounded... pleased. I guess he'd noticed that I'm not a social butterfly, like I used to be before Mom was taken. As far as he knew, my only friends were Jake and “Philip,” Ax's human alter ego. He was mostly right. Jake is the only person I'd call a friend. Not that I'm not close with the other Animorphs, in a weird way, but friendship isn't the right word for that. Comradeship, maybe. Whatever it is you call the bond between soldiers fighting in the same trench. 

“Yeah.” I thought for a moment. “His name's Steve.” There would be a missing person report for David soon, and I didn't want my dad make the connection. 

“All right, I'll pop in another chicken breast,” Dad said. “You know where we keep the air mattress.” 

“Yup. Upstairs closet.” We'd only moved from our crappy apartment into our new house a few months ago, so I remembered where we'd unpacked everything. “See ya.” 

I stepped out of the phone booth. “Your name's Steve for tonight,” I told David. “Make up some name for Kirianor. If my dad sees your name in a missing child alert in the newspaper, we'll be in trouble.” I started walking again. David followed. 

After five minutes of silence, David asked, “How do you know what it's like? Being a Controller?” 

He was probably thinking of the Technicolor description I'd given of life with a Yeerk in your head. Probably hoping that I'd exaggerated how bad it was. I could see his pit bull dæmon staring off into space. Imagining what her parents were going through? Just lost? Who knew? 

“We've been to the Yeerk pool. We've seen them enslave people.” I looked at the sidewalk ahead of me, but Diamanta, a bright blue poison-dart frog on my shoulder, fixed David with a steady black stare. “Jake and Cassie have been Controllers themselves.” 

“How did they escape?” 

I decided to gloss over Cassie's story, because David would grab onto the stupid hope that his parents had “good” Yeerks. What happened with Aftran was a freak accident that won't happen again, unless she really has been making converts to the Peace Movement like Cassie says. “The only way to be free of a Yeerk is to starve it out. They have to go to the Yeerk pool every three days to feed on Kandrona rays, this kind of radiation that comes from the sun on their home planet. If you trap a Controller without Kandrona for three days, the Yeerk dies.” 

Another silence passed, longer than the first. Then David said, “So, that Andalite. What's his name, Ax. Is he really one of you?” 

“Uh, yeah.” I raised an eyebrow at him. 

“But he isn't, like, a real person, is he? I mean, it makes sense with Yeerks, because they're evil. But Ax doesn't have a dæmon.” 

“Hey,” I said. “Just because he doesn't have a dæmon doesn't mean he's not a real person. Think of it from his perspective. To Andalites, we're the weirdos, because our minds are split into two bodies. They just have it all in one body.” 

“Like an animal.” 

“He's not like an animal. He has thoughts and feelings just like us. Look, I know it's hard to get used to. But aliens just aren't like us. We have our thing, Andalites have theirs. And the Yeerks have their thing too, I guess, but their thing is enslaving people.” 

“I guess.” Kirianor became an anaconda and coiled around him in tight loops. It was a familiar gesture. Diamanta does it too. The pressure of her coils soothes me. 

By then, we were almost at my house, thank God. My next-door neighbor was out on her porch reading. Her cockatiel dæmon saw me and whistled at me. He always does that when he sees me. He thinks it's cute or something, or maybe that I'm eight years old and I find that kind of thing funny. It's embarrassing. Fortunately, David was too wrapped up in his own problems to notice. 

We got to my front door. I didn't have to use my key, because we don't live in a bad neighborhood anymore and don't have to lock the front door when one of us is home. “Hey, Dad,” I said, turning left from the front corridor into the kitchen. My dad was standing by the kitchen island, tossing a salad. The room smelled like my favorite brand of sauce for chicken. 

My dad looked up, smiled, and put down the salad tongs. He wiped his hands off on a rag and stepped around the island to greet us. “Hi, Marco. And you must be Steve. Nice to meet you,” he said, extending a hand. “I'm Peter.” 

“Mirazai,” said my dad's cuttlefish dæmon from her tank, hanging on its strap from his shoulder. 

“Thanks for having me,” David said quietly. 

Kirianor loosened her coils so she could extend her head toward Mirazai's tank. “Hello, ma'am. I'm Erinys.” 

I don't know what I was expecting from David, but I definitely didn't expect him to be so… polite. My dad was impressed. “It's no trouble at all. Welcome to town, by the way. Marco said you were new.” 

“Thanks,” said David. 

“Marco, why don't you set the table? Dinner's almost ready. The plates are out, we just need cups and silverware.” 

I went to get the glasses and silverware. I overheard Dad saying, “You didn't bring anything, Steve. Won't you need a change of clothes? A toothbrush?” 

“I guess I just forgot,” said David. “It's fine. I can just borrow a T-shirt from Marco for pajamas and wear the same clothes tomorrow.” 

I missed the rest of the conversation as I went to the dining room to set the table. David seemed to be improvising pretty well. Good thing he wasn't like Cassie, who couldn't lie her way out of a paper bag. Not that Cassie deserves to be compared to David, but he was decent at lying. I had to give him that much. 

“Table's set,” I called. 

“Just a minute,” my dad called from the kitchen. Then he came in with a plate of chicken breasts covered in sauce. David had the salad bowl and a bottle of seltzer. My dad is addicted to flavored seltzer, and I don't mind it, so we drink it with dinner every night. 

My dad served David a chicken breast and some salad. “So, Steve. How do you like your new school?” 

“It's all right, I guess,” David said. “I haven't been here long.” 

I didn't like the way this conversation was going. I couldn't let my dad ask David too many questions. “Hey Dad,” I said. I had no idea what I was about to say, but if there's one thing I'm good at doing at the drop of a hat, it's being stupid and distracting. “What kind of compliments do you think girls like?” 

Mirazai flashed red and pink, which I knew from long experience to be her colors of amusement. “What kind of… Marco, is there someone I need to know about?” 

“No!” Diamanta shrank into a tiny red frog, and I could feel my face heat a little. “It's just that girls always seem to take compliments the wrong way.” 

“You're probably saying the wrong kind of compliment,” my dad said. “Here's something that works on everyone, boy or girl. People want compliments on things that matter to them. If a girl doesn't care about fashion, then there's no point saying her clothes look nice. Look at what people really care about. If someone is into basketball, compliment their jump shot.” He smiled faintly. “That's how I got your mother to notice me.” 

I shot a sideways glance at David. He was focused on his food, cutting his chicken into smaller and smaller pieces. Kirianor prodded at pieces of lettuce in the salad with praying mantis pincers. 

“Oh,” I said. I wanted to hear this story, but not with David here. 

“Yeah. Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime,” said Dad. “Say, Steve. Do you follow any sports teams?” 

David answered my dad's questions politely but briefly. It wasn't a bad tactic. My dad would think he was just shy. I changed the subject by bringing up the X-Files episode from last night. My dad's a total dork for the X-Files. 

“Can I help with the dishes?” David said when we were done. 

“You're a guest,” said Dad. “Marco will help me with the dishes. Why don't you just relax.” 

“Are you sure?” Kirianor, a pit bull again, looked… eager. She was looking up at my dad with that expression dogs get when they really want to go somewhere with you and they can't understand why you're leaving them behind. That's when it occurred to me. David was completely shook up. His world had been turned upside down, and his parents weren't there to help him through it. Maybe a parental figure of any kind at all was better than nothing. 

“You can help clear the table, if you really want. I'll get started washing the pans.” 

David and I cleared the table. I helped Dad wash dishes while David dried them and stacked them. 

When we were done, I took the air mattress out from the downstairs closet, along with some sheets. Diamanta became a capuchin monkey and took a pillow from a couch in the living room. David followed me upstairs, Kirianor a wary wildcat. 

I started inflating the air mattress. “You can take the bed,” I said. I could tell he was exhausted. I still didn't like him, but I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him. “I'm going to do some homework by flashlight. I have some clean T-shirts, uh…” I checked through my dresser drawers until I found one that actually had clean clothes in it. “Here.” 

We took turns using the bathroom to brush our teeth and change. When I got back from the bathroom, David had already fallen into a fitful doze, Kirianor twitching and snarling a little in the grip of a dream. I got out a flashlight and worked on algebra homework for a while. Then I switched out the light and went to sleep. 

Good thing I'm a light sleeper these days. 

* * *

**Marco**

If David had seemed exhausted the first time he went to bed, he was a hundred times worse now. His eyes were rimmed all around with red. His face was pale, with blue circles showing under his eyes. Kirianor kept flicking from form to form, each one with matted fur or missing feathers. He crawled into my bed without a word, drawing the blankets up over his head. 

It took me a long time to fall asleep. Seeing David's dad like that reminded me of all the times I've seen my mother under the control of Visser One. The cruel words the Yeerk has shaped with my mother's kind mouth. The way Mercurio never touches her anymore, because to the Yeerk, that doesn't matter. Not that I really know if she's still alive. Would it be kinder, in the end, if she had drowned deep in the ocean? At least she would be free from that total slavery. Finally, the gentle pressure of Diamanta coiled around my chest lulled me to sleep. 

I woke up to the sound of the hall phone ringing. I wanted to roll over and put the pillow over my head until it went away, but it might be Jake calling. I couldn't miss it. I got up and answered the phone. 

“How is everything?” said Jake. 

“Fine. No more incidents.” 

“Cassie said he can come to her place later.” 

“All right. I'll give him breakfast, then walk him over.” 

I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and shower. When I got out, David was awake, sitting on my bed in his jeans and one of my T-shirts, which was too tight on him and rumpled from the night's events. Kirianor was still a wildcat, her fur sticking up in all directions. 

“Bathroom's free,” I said. “I'll be downstairs with breakfast. My dad's probably still asleep.” 

David left the room. I got dressed, went downstairs, and got out some milk and cereal. He came downstairs in the same set of clothes. Kirianor was an alligator, taking up most of the space under the table as David sat down and poured some cereal into his bowl. He took a spoonful and stuck it in his mouth, only then realizing that he'd forgotten to add milk. He added the milk, then chewed more spoonfuls mechanically. Dia, jackal-formed next to my chair, could see Kirianor curled against David, her eyes wary as a hunted animal's. 

“Look,” I said. “They're still in there, somewhere.” 

David stared at me dully, his spoon paused mid-journey between his bowl and his mouth. “Huh?” 

I'm not sure why I bothered. It wasn't much use. But I'd been through the same thing David was going through, and some part of me wanted to try. “You might see them again. Your parents. Whenever I see my mother, like that, I think about how she's still in there. And maybe she's still fighting.” 

David kept staring. Kirianor made a low rumbling noise and shot Dia a sullen glare. Then he went back to eating his cereal like a zombie. 

So much for trying. 

* * *

**Cassie**

David and I demorphed near the Gardens, while everyone else stayed as birds overhead. They'd let us know if a known Controller came by so I could keep David from being seen by someone who might recognize him. The staff at the Gardens know me, so they let us in without any hassle. 

“What morph do you use in battle?” David asked as I steered him toward an employee entrance to the area behind the exhibits. Kirianor flew beside him as a golden eagle, mimicking the morph they'd just been in for the first time. 

“Moose,” I said. “That's recent, though. I used to use wolf.” 

Kirianor gave me a startled look. David said, “Why would you trade a wolf morph for a _moose_?” 

I raised my eyebrows. “Moose are deadlier than wolves. On its own, a wolf isn't much of a hunter. It needs a pack to really be effective. A moose can do a lot of damage by itself.” I didn't try to explain that I'd picked wolf on purpose because it wasn't deadly. David would see that as weakness, and he would be right. All I'd ever done in wolf morph was make sure that the Hork-Bajir I fought suffered from their wounds for hours, maybe, before they died at the hands of an empire with no use for maimed soldiers. 

“But I thought wolves hunted moose,” said David. 

“They hunt the weak, the old or the sick. Why waste the effort on a healthy adult, when the hunt will take days? We like to think that wolves are brave and powerful because they're hunters, like we used to be. But those are just stories we tell ourselves. Predators go after easy prey. But prey? They'll stand and fight, no matter what, because they're the ones who'll get torn apart if they don't.” I almost pointed out how I'd held my own in moose morph at the battle at his house, but it would be cruel to bring up what might be the worst moment of his life. Besides, he probably hadn't been paying attention to me anyway. 

“A wolf would be a good morph, though,” David said thoughtfully. Kirianor became a wolf, his thoughts made form. “Strong, with teeth and claws.” 

_Where does he get his ideas about animals from? Kids' books?_ Quincy wondered. 

_Probably,_ I thought, laughing silently. _That's how it is with most people._

“I don't think the wolf exhibit would be a good idea right now,” I said. “It's really popular, so there'll be lots of people there.” 

“And they don't hang out enough near the staff entrance for you to just slip in and acquire one,” Quincy told Kirianor. 

“I can acquire DNA too?” Kirianor said. 

“Sure,” said Quincy. “Oh, here's the lion exhibit on the left. Some of them like to sleep near the staff entrance. Though if they aren't close enough for you to acquire, you could always go for the buffalo we have sedated in the medical bay.” 

David stopped by the door. Kirianor instantly became a lioness, watching the door to the exhibit intently. “Don't lions eat buffalo?” 

“Sometimes. And sometimes buffalo gore lions through the neck when they go after their young. Buffalo are tough.” 

“Tell me about the lions,” David said, intent. 

“They'd make a good morph too,” I said. “Lazy as anything, but they make quick, neat kills. One blow from its paw or bite to the neck, and it's over.” I'd considered lion as a replacement for my wolf morph for that reason, but I decided against it. Teeth sinking into an enemy's neck: too personal. Too intimate with death. I prefer the distance of horns and hooves. 

David reached out and sank his fingers into Kirianor's fur, steadying himself. His expression was distant, hers focused on the door to the lion exhibit. She bared her fangs, trying out the shape of them. Imagining what it would be like to fight that way, maybe. 

“I'll do it,” said David. “I'll use lion as my battle morph.” 

I nodded. It didn't surprise me. David was going through the roughest time imaginable. Becoming a lion meant security to him. Protection. Power. “Stand right up against the door, close as you can,” I said. “You want to give Kirianor as much range as possible.” 

“Be a fly,” Quincy advised Kirianor. “Flies land on them all the time. They won't even notice. I'll come too.” 

I pressed my back up against the door next to David. Quincy buzzed as a fly at the gap between the door and its frame. A moment later, Kirianor joined him. Quincy slipped through first. I saw Kirianor follow. 

Through Quincy's fragmented fly vision, I saw that the lions were far enough from the staff entrance to the exhibit that it would be a strain for Kirianor to reach. Through my own eyes, I saw beads of sweat gather on David's hairline as his dæmon flew closer to them in slow spirals. 

“Come on, David,” I said. “Almost there.” 

Then his face took on the concentration of acquiring, and I knew Kirianor had made it. Quincy flew back to me and became a bat on my shoulder once more. 

When Kirianor returned, she became a lioness and licked David's face. He smiled and rubbed the top of her head. 

“You're set,” I said. “Just remember, the first time you morph the lion will be like when you morphed the eagle. New instincts. So be careful.” 

“Uh huh,” David said, but he didn't really seem to be listening. He held Kirianor's head in his hands, staring at her tawny form and her amber eyes. 

_There's something about the idea of being a lion,_ Quincy mused. _Something that captures his imagination._

I couldn't really put myself in his place. My parents had taught me facts, not myths and stories, about animals since I was a little kid. Not that I don't have my own ideas about animals, but there's something in the way that children see wolves and lions and eagles that I never experienced. When David looked into the eyes of a lioness, I didn't know what he saw. 

* * *

**Cassie**

There are many, many ways to be tired, and as an Animorph, I've come to learn them all. 

There's the zombie kind of tired, where your brain shuts off but your body keeps on going. There's painful exhaustion, where the effort to keep going is so great that your entire body hurts and your head feels like it's on fire. There's apathetic tiredness, where your brain and body work but your emotions are burned out, and you can't feel anything anymore. 

Right now, I was giggly-tired. I was delirious with it. I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd seen the President. The President of the United States! I've seen things that no human being has ever seen, but for some reason my mind boggled at seeing the President, even if it was through cockroach eyes. I'd been on his _leg._

But it wasn't time for silliness. I had to set up a place for David to sleep in the hayloft without my parents noticing. Then I could sleep. Except even then, I'd have to get up and check on David every once in a while. Jake and I had agreed on that, after what happened the night he stayed at Marco's. 

So after dinner, I offered to take care of all the cleaning up. My parents thanked me and went to the living room to watch the news. I put all the leftovers from dinner in a Tupperware, grabbed a fork and a bag of chips from the pantry, and brought it up to David in the hayloft. “I'll be back with sheets,” I told him. 

I went to the guest room closet and dug around until I found some a blanket, some sheets, and a pillowcase, all with a pale floral pattern. My parents, wrapped up in the news, didn't notice my comings and goings, and I took a route into the barn that avoided Emeraude's pulley platform. 

“I feel bad for him,” Quincy murmured, perched on my shoulder as a bat so he could echolocate through the darkening evening. “Sleeping up there in the loft. As soon as this mission is over, we should go to the Chee and see if they can put him up. With their holograms, they'll be able to shelter him for as long as he needs.” 

“Yeah. We really should. I guess there just hasn't been time. It would be so much easier to help David out if we didn't have such an emergency hanging over our heads.” 

I climbed up to the hayloft. David had finished his dinner, though he'd left the chips untouched. I put the sheets and blanket over some hay bales. “There,” I said. “Not the most comfy, but it's the best I can do. I'm sorry about this, David. We'll try to figure out a more permanent arrangement. Do you need anything else? You can't really brush your teeth up here, but I could get you some mouthwash and a damp washcloth to wash your face.” 

“No thanks,” David mumbled. He didn't make a move toward the bed. Kirianor might as well have been a statue of an alligator. 

While I stuffed some hay into the pillowcase and straightened out the sheets, Quincy fluttered down from my shoulder and became a rat, scurrying up to within a foot of Kirianor's nose. “Your father was very brave,” he said. 

David flinched the tiniest bit. 

“I remember. When we came to fight Visser Three,” Quincy went on. “He was scared – he'd have been crazy not to be scared – but he faced down the scariest things he'd ever seen in his life, to protect you. The way his dæmon went after those Hork-Bajir – he'd do anything for you. And I bet if he knew you were fighting the Yeerks, he'd be proud. He'd be glad to know his son would do the same thing for him.” 

“You don't know my father,” said Kirianor, quietly. 

“No,” said Quincy. “But my dad loves me, and I know how he would feel.” 

I put down the makeshift pillow. David was watching me. “You're a decent person, Cassie,” he said. “You're not like the rest of them. At least you _try_. But you can't fix this.” He turned away and punched a hay bale. “I miss my room. I miss Spawn. I miss just hanging out and watching TV. Without TV, all I can do up here is… think.” 

“I'm sorry,” I said. I didn't know what else to say. I didn't have any way to distract him from all the thoughts that must be going through his head. I took the empty Tupperware and the fork he'd used, but left the chips in case he got hungry later. “Goodnight, David.” 

He was back to staring off into space. Kirianor made a tiny motion of her head that might have been an acknowledgment toward Quincy, but probably meant nothing. I climbed down from the hayloft and turned off the light in the barn. 

_It's not your fault,_ Quincy said as I washed the Tupperware and the fork in the sink. He was back to being a bat. _If we hadn't saved him, he would be a Controller now._

_Somehow, that choice doesn't seem as kind as it did when we made it. Who are we to play God with his life? It was either leave him to the Yeerks or conscript him into a guerrilla war living the life of a fugitive. I thought it would be better to choose freedom, but David isn't free at all. If he makes a break for it again tonight, we'll have to hunt him down, just like the Yeerks hunt down runaway hosts._

_It's not the same. At least he has his own mind. He can make some of his own choices._

_Yes,_ I thought as I left the kitchen and headed up to my room. _But under these circumstances, what choices will he make?_

I did homework for a while, not that it was much use. My computer screen kept fogging in and out of focus in my tired eyes. I dozed off for a little while, and dreamed a little, of predators' eyes gleaming among muttering shadows. When I woke, I suddenly remembered that I never got around to the last chore on my list today. I gathered my scattered thoughts and got up to give the injured deer her meds. As I approached the barn, Quincy echolocating through the dark on my shoulder, I hoped David was a deep enough sleeper that he wouldn't wake up when I turned on the lights. 

But when I opened the barn door and turned the lights on, David wasn't there. 

I went back in my house and looked all over to make sure he hadn't come inside. I went to my room and morphed bat, flying a circuit around my house. Nothing. I even I flew out toward Tobias' meadow. Still no sign. I flew back to my room and demorphed. Rain was starting to come in through the open window. I closed it. 

Time to call Jake.


	2. Not a Tame Lion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He's wild, you know. Not like a_ tame _lion._  
>  – from “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warning this chapter: child-on-child violence that borders on sexual violence.

**Jake**

I stood outside the hotel room where David had broken in, my hair and my morphing suit damp with rain. Through Merlyse's eyes, I could see that I didn't look like the leader of the Animorphs about to lay down the law. I looked like a tired kid.

_I can help with that,_ said Merlyse, becoming a wiry, tough coyote, her fur the color of the desert. Her fur wasn't shiny, and her ears were tattered, but her teeth were sharp and her eyes glinted hard yellow. It wasn't the most imposing form she could have taken, but it was _her_.

I knocked on the door. "David, it's me, Jake. I know you're in there."

The door opened. David stood there, wearing the clothes I'd loaned him yesterday. Kirianor was draped across his shoulders as a king cobra. I stepped in without waiting for an invitation. Merlyse passed right by him, giving him only just enough space for propriety. The TV was still on, muted, the colors from the screen flickering across the beige walls of the hotel room.

“What, exactly, are you doing here?” My voice was level, but I knew I was glowering because Merlyse was too, eyes flashing like shards of yellow glass.

David made excuses. He complained. He railed against me. It wasn't anything I didn't expect. If what had happened to David had happened to me, maybe I would have been the same way.

Maybe.

I studied David for a moment. He was sprawled on the hotel bed, Kirianor wrapped around his arms and shoulders in loose coils. My T-shirt and pants were rumpled. His hair was wet from a shower, the first he'd taken since his world fell apart. He was right. It wasn't fair, and we'd have to come up with a better idea of how to house him and take care of him. But the law applies to everyone, no matter how much you're suffering. David didn't get a free pass because his life sucked.

Merlyse's ears and body pointed toward David and Kirianor, her tail held in a stiff line behind her, like a pointer dog fixed on its target. “Listen to me,” she said. “We didn't give you the morphing power so you could do whatever you want. We gave it to you so you could fight to save your parents, and everyone else who the Yeerks have hurt. Are you here to use the power for yourself, or for the people who really need it?”

Kirianor uncoiled from David, spread her hood, and hissed at Merlyse. “Are you saying I don't care about my parents?”

“I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that you're acting like you care more about power for its own sake than you do about using it to fight this war,” said Merl, peeling her lips back from her teeth. “And if that's going to be your attitude, then you're a danger to us. And you're against what we stand for.”

David rolled out of bed and stood up. Kirianor slithered up his arm and reared up on his shoulder, hood spread, fangs unfolded. “Are you threatening me?” he said.

Merl stared up at Kirianor, her teeth no longer showing. Yellow eyes stared into brown. “No. Just telling it like it is.”

“We're the only family you have now, David,” I said. “The only people you can trust. The only people who can help you. We're all you have. Deal with it.”

David gave me a resentful look. But Kirianor slithered to the floor and became a pit bull – a stocky, jowly dog, but a head smaller than Merlyse's coyote form. Capitulation. For now, at least.

“Let's go,” I said.

We got wings and flew out the smashed hotel window. _How are we going to pay for that damage?_ I wondered. _That could cost hundreds of dollars._

_I guess we can't,_ Merl said. She directed a glance at David, making sure he was following us back to Cassie's barn. Not that she really thought he was going to take off by himself again, especially not in this rain that made flying miserable, but better to be safe.

We demorphed just outside the barn. Cassie opened the door for us so we could get out of the rain. “There you are,” she said. Quincy, a wallaby, touched his nose to Merl's for a moment. “I've already let Rachel and the others know you found him.”

Kirianor, a cobra once more, hissed. “You told everyone I was gone?” David said.

“Of course,” Cassie said. “I was worried, David. A Controller could have seen you and turned you in to Visser Three. We had to find you before anything terrible could happen.”

“No one saw me,” David said. Kirianor calmed down, settling in a loop around David's neck.

“I'm glad,” Cassie said. “Go on back to the loft, David. I left a towel up there so you dry off. I have to turn the lights off in the barn before my parents notice.”

David nodded stiffly and climbed up to the loft. Cassie turned the lights off and we left the barn.

“This isn't a permanent solution,” I said.

“No, it isn't,” Cassie said. “But we just don't have time for that now. Get some sleep, Jake.”

Quincy touched noses with Merl again, and I morphed bat. But I didn't go straight home. Not yet.

I flew to Tobias' meadow, staying along the treeline. With my echolocation, I could see a sketchy image of a red-tailed hawk settling onto a branch to sleep.

«Tobias?»

He startled. «Jake? Where are you?» At night, Tobias can't see much better than a human.

«A bat. Hanging from a branch above you.»

Tobias looked up and saw me. «What's up?»

«Tobias, I know we're busy with this mission and all. But if you have some spare time in the next couple days, could you follow David's parents for a while? See where they go?»

«Sure. I've got plenty of spare time anyway. Why?»

«After tonight, I'm worried he's going to do something stupid. But I'm not sure what. I thought maybe he'd try to track down his parents. But we don't know where they work or where they go. So I thought it would be good to know, just in case.»

«All right. I guess that makes sense,» said Tobias. «Goodnight, Jake.»

«Night, Tobias.» Then, finally, I flew home.

* * *

**Ax**

I perched on a tree branch in owl morph, watching Cassie's barn through a mist of rain.

«What do you think?» Tobias said. It was the first time he'd spoken in hours. «You think David's a traitor?»

«I am not sure if he is a traitor. But I think he is a coward.» He had proven it again and again. He had screamed in fear aboard the helicopter, nearly giving us away. He had begun to demorph in the air ventilation shaft, out of fear, even though Prince Jake had ordered him not to do so. And when he thought that turning on us might save his life, he had thrown himself on the Abomination's mercy. I, too, had been afraid in all of these circumstances. But fear had not overcome my reason or my loyalty. I will never allow the fear to overpower me, as long as I draw breath.

«But think about it. We took him away from a normal life. He has nothing left. You chose to become an _aristh_ , and me, well, I had nothing to lose anyway. But he didn't have a choice. It was all just torn away from him. He's under a lot of stress. Anyone might have freaked out, after going through all of that. Right?»

«David owes Prince Jake his freedom, just as I owed all of you my life when you rescued me from the Dome ship. I believe that giving David the morphing power was a mistake. Nonetheless, Prince Jake decided to give him a chance to fight instead of leaving him a slave. For that, David owes Prince Jake his loyalty. Instead, he gives him cowardice and disobedience.»

«Yeah. I know what you mean. Even now, I sometimes feel like I can't possibly repay Jake for everything he's done.» A pause. Then: «Maybe we should have listened to you. Chosen someone we knew would be loyal. Because if David does decide to turn on us…»

It was true. David didn't know all of our secrets, but he knew enough to betray us. He knew where we lived. He knew the humans' identities. That information, in Visser Three's hands, would destroy us. What Tobias did not say, but surely must have considered in some part of his mind, was what we might have to do to prevent such a disaster from occurring.

Then, through the darkness and the rain, my owl eyes spotted a vast-winged shape leaving the barn. «There he is!» I told Tobias, already launching off the branch. Then, to Prince Jake, I said, «This is Aximili. We have an eagle leaving the barn.»

«I see him,» said Tobias, following me toward the truck where Prince Jake lay in wait. «Jake? I hope you hear me. Because we have a traitor.»

We landed on the truck. Prince Jake and Prince Merlyse were wet and shivering, but their eyes were alert. “Follow him,” he said. “But don't let him see you. I'll be right behind you.”

Tobias and I took off. As we left, Tobias said, «This won't be easy, Jake. Ax can see better in the dark than David can, but David's much bigger and faster than either of us.»

“Do your best,” Prince Jake said. Feathers were already appearing on his skin.

Once we had regained altitude, I could see David. «There he is,» I told Tobias grimly. «Flying south. He is half a mile ahead.»

«I don't see him yet,» Tobias said, «but I trust you.»

We kept flying, using all of the experience we had with flight that David did not, narrowing the distance between him and us. «I see him,» Tobias said shortly.

Just then, David turned around and started flying toward us. «I think he sees us as well,» I said.

«Split up,» said Tobias. «Give him more than one target. Keep him busy until Jake shows up.» He banked right, so I went left. In Prince Jake's absence, Tobias knew what best to do when it came to aerial combat. What I did not know was whether he would pursue me or Tobias. Mostly, I hoped he would choose me. I did not want to see my _shorm_ hurt, and I could see better through the darkness in my morph than he could. But on the other hand, Tobias is a more skilled aerial fighter than I.

David veered toward me.

There was no way I could win a direct confrontation with him. But though I was smaller, I was also more maneuverable, and I knew the city better than he. So I flew to where the buildings were denser, and I could try to lose him in the network of streets.

Still David gained distance on me. He would have me before the city was dense enough to give me an advantage. So instead, I landed on the roof of a building and began to demorph. If I could lure him into a battle on the rooftop, I would have a greater advantage. I cannot win every fight with my tail blade. But I have felled a Tyrannosaurus rex with it, so I would have at least a chance.

The feathers were the first to disappear, leaving me a naked creature shivering in the night air. My beak melted into my face. My hearing grew dull. My talons fused into hooves. But my eyes were still sharp enough to see David coming toward me, his own talons outstretched. Desperately, I tried to speed my morph. I needed my tail blade. I was helpless!

«You filthy traitor,» I spat, trying to say something, anything that might give David pause. «Are you planning to sell us to the monster who enslaved your parents? He will show you as little mercy as he did them!» As I spoke, my vision dimmed as my owl eyes shrank into Andalite main eyes. I was growing larger, but I still had no tail.

David did not pause in his attack. He said nothing. I might as well not have spoken. I didn't even have enough length in my legs to run. I could not flee or defend myself, only watch as my doom came swooping silently toward me.

“TSEEEEEER!” Tobias shrieked as he dove toward David from above. David flared his wings, canceling his descent, and wheeled around to face Tobias. As Tobias struck, he struck back. They became entangled in a fury of feathers and talons.

At long last, my tail appeared. But it was to no avail. The fight was too far above me for my blade to be of any use, even if I leapt as high as I could.

Tobias won free of the cage of David's talons. I could not see well enough to tell who had come off the worse in the fight, but he and I both knew he could not win in any battle of strength. So he fled, back toward the outskirts of the city. David took off after him.

As soon as I was done demorphing, I remorphed to owl and followed. I could not let Tobias face David alone. They had enough of a head start that I could not immediately spot them when I remorphed. I flew in the direction I had seen them leave. At the edge of the city, where the houses gave way to meadow and forest, I saw a golden eagle and a red-tailed hawk locked in battle, screaming and tearing at each other with beak and talon. But again, I was too far to intervene. I put on a burst of speed, my wing muscles screaming. Tobias needed me.

There was a long, quavering scream of pain, and the crumpled figure of a hawk falling.

I cried out wordlessly in thought-speech. Prince Jake was coming toward me in peregrine falcon morph, but I had eyes only for my _shorm_. I flew on, and saw Tobias' broken body on the ground, torrents of blood darkening his body into a shadow.

«Prince Jake,» I said, and I think my thought-speech betrayed far more of what was in my hearts than I intended it to, «He killed Tobias. David is a murderer. And I intend to pay him back in kind.»

«A murderer – no!»

«Yes,» I said, following David.

«Ax,» Prince Jake said. «Stop.»

«Prince Jake. Please do not tell me to stop. For the sake of my honor, let me avenge my _shorm_. My best friend.»

«No, Ax. You can't take him on alone. We can't take chances. Not with Tobias dead.» Prince Jake's thought-speech was steady, my only anchor through the sea of rage roaring for vengeance. «Get Rachel. David has done a terrible thing. We need her. I'll slow him down if I can. Get Rachel, and we'll make David sorry for what he did, I swear.»

Of all the times my prince's direct orders have come in conflict with the dictates of my honor and my hearts, this time, they were the hardest to obey. But David had turned traitor out of disloyalty to Prince Jake and the Animorphs as a whole. I would not stain myself with the same disloyalty. I would not, even if it meant I might not bring about David's end with my own blade.

I flew to Rachel's house. It was a good thing that I had made this flight many times before, because all I could see was the body of a red-tailed hawk spilling life's last blood in a dark stain on the grass. My wings very nearly steered themselves to Rachel's window.

The window was open, as the human Animorphs' windows always are during an important mission. My owl's wings made no sound as I landed on Rachel's desk. She remained asleep, her hair tangled around her face as she murmured nonsense phrases to herself. Abineng, shaped as some large hooved animal, did not stir. Though Abineng was closer, I knew he would be made deeply uncomfortable by any physical contact with me, so instead I fluttered over to Rachel and pushed her shoulder with my talons, then flew back to the desk.

“Aaaahhh!” she screamed, her upper body suddenly rigid and upright in her bed. Abineng made a braying noise and reared up on his hind hooves before settling back to all four.

«Rachel, it is Aximili. You must come now. Prince Jake is in danger. And Tobias – Tobias is…»

Rachel was already free of her bed, standing on her two legs. Both her and Abineng's eyes were locked on me. “What?” she said.

«It's David. He's a traitor. A murderer.» To my shame, my thought-speech shook as I said, «He killed Tobias.» My _shorm_ , whom I had failed to save.

Abineng scuffed one front hoof along the floor, settling his weight back on his hind legs. As a four-hooved animal, I could interpret this gesture as one of aggression. Rachel rearranged her bed, then began the morph to owl. I briefed her on what had happened, and we flew out into the night.

I couldn't know for sure what was in Rachel's thoughts. But I suspected it was the same as what was in mine. After what he had done, there was no chance of quarter. We were on a mission to kill him.

To avenge my _shorm_ 's murder.

* * *

**Rachel**

It was hard to control myself, to keep from dropping down to my cousin's broken body. But if Ax could keep his head, even now, then so could I. Ax, for whom Tobias' murder was an even greater loss than for me. Tobias pretended to be Ax's dæmon most of the time when he's in human morph. That had an effect on them, even if it wasn't real. The closeness of their friendship was – had been – obvious. Ax must want David's blood as much as I did. But he didn't go diving headlong into what might be a trap.

And yes, Ax was right. Jake was breathing, faintly, the sound burbling through the blood in his throat. And with Jake down, I had to lead. Ax is a great fighter, but he's not a leader. He likes to have orders to follow. Well, I was going to give some to him.

_We're not like Jake. Can we give orders like he does?_ Abineng wondered.

_Yes, we can. Just act confident. Like we know what we're doing._

_I know what we're doing,_ Abineng snarled, imagining David's head squeezed between a pair of grizzly paws.

«Ax. Demorph,» I said. And to my relief, he did. Ax in his own form is the best kind of backup there is. «As soon as you're demorphed, go to the head of those stairs over there. You'll be able to see Jake and cover me.»

I demorphed, Abineng taking shape as an antelope beside me. I didn't like the moment of vulnerability between morphs. Even with Abineng by my side, I was soft and easy for claws to tear. A grizzly bear wouldn't be easy to take down. For David, I'd make damn sure it was impossible.

A faint sound echoed through the empty mall. Ax and I exchanged a look, his main eyes directed toward the sound and his stalk eyes at me.

Then, through Abi's eyes, I saw it. A tan blur down the walkway. _Lion!_ Abi cried. There was no time for hesitation. I leapt for the railing. Abi lowered his head, positioning his horns to strike. Ax took a fighting stance, his face a mask of determination.

I cried out in pain as my hands took the weight of my body. FWAPP! Through Abi's eyes I saw Ax strike at the charging lion with his tail, his eyes like shards of green ice. Snarling in pain, David veered off course, coming to a halt past Ax and Abi.

Going back up on the walkway was not an option. Dropping to the floor and breaking bones was not an option. The crossbeams below were an option. If Abineng and Ax could hold David off for long enough. If I could make the jump.

Then, in a blur of liquid speed, David turned and attacked. He sank his teeth into the base of Ax's tail, half-severing it from his body. Ax gave a horrible cry of pain, then David closed his jaws around Ax's neck, his teeth poised to rend his head from his shoulders.

Meanwhile, I swung wildly, building up momentum. My arm muscles screamed.

«An antelope, Abineng? Seriously?» Kirianor mocked. «Big, bad Abineng uses antelope form to defend himself?»

“Let him go,” Abi said tersely.

I swung and released.

I fell! One foot connected with the beam. Abineng flew down as an albatross, taking hold of my hands with his talons and keeping me from overbalancing as my right foot stabbed at the air, questing desperately for the crossbeam. Finally, I felt it. With Abineng's wingbeats to stabilize me, my weight rested evenly on the beam.

At the same time, Ax kicked David with both his hind legs. The blow was so powerful that David was flung against the nearest storefront, sending a spiderweb of cracks through the glass. Still gushing blood from the half-severed base of his tail, Ax leapt clear over the walkway railing, all the way across a thirty-foot drop, to the walkway opposite. As soon as he landed, he shrank as he morphed away the injury. «For what you did to Tobias,» said Ax, «we will destroy you.»

David ignored Ax. He got to his feet and swiped at me through the railing. It was no use. I was out of reach. I stared up at him, baring my teeth in triumph. He had a diagonal cut across his face, dripping blood between his eyes, where Ax had struck him with his blade.

«That's OK,» David said. «I'm not a murderer, you know. I wouldn't kill a person, anyone with a dæmon. Now, a bird… a tiger… sure.»

I stared back at him, through the steady beat of Abi's wings. “Find a place to hide. Because I'll make you a promise: I will kill you, David.”

David turned away, laughing.

It passed between me and Abi, quicker than thought: no way we let this bastard walk away laughing. I let go of Abi's talons, holding my arms out to either side for balance. He flew up after David and spun, clouting him across the face with a five foot long wing. David growled in rage, snapping his teeth at Abi, and I gasped in pain as a fang grazed his shoulder. But in the blink of an eye, Abi became a dragonfly and zipped out of David's reach.

“I'll kill you,” Abi hissed, as he darted back to me. “I'll kill you! _I'll kill you!_ ”

Ax made no more threats. But as David left, a pair of yellow owl eyes followed his path, blazing with dire promises.

* * *

**Marco**

It wasn't one of the usual nightmares.

Most of them are full of blood and screaming. This one wasn't like that. It was full of memories, of life before my mom “died.” Diamanta, Mirazai, and Mercurio playing in the water while Dad and I sat in the back of the sailboat drinking Coke from bottles and Mom adjusted the sails. Watching telenovelas in the living room, Dad and I trying to guess what the characters were saying while Mom laughed. Mom picking me up after school and taking me to the ice cream shop.

And all the while, ghosts of my real Mom, and the real Mercurio, the slaves, standing beside the Yeerk impersonating them, staring. Because that had been all they were able to do. Watch in horror as the Yeerk lived their life, their loved ones never knowing the difference.

Controller-Mom tucked me into bed, Controller-Mercurio touching his beak to Dia's parrot beak. The real Mercurio stood by and watched, his eyes empty and numb. My real mother stood over me as the Yeerk pulled the covers up to my chin, watching.

There was a noise in my bedroom. Someone else. Something else, maybe. I sat bolt upright in bed, Diamanta coiled around me in black mamba shape.

Through our combined senses, I could tell who it was, despite the moonless night. David.

Our teachers Mike and Asair in self-defense class always told us to trust our instincts. My instincts were screaming at me that something was wrong. So before I could even start to think about why David was here, Dia uncoiled from me and attacked.

Black mambas aren't the most venomous snakes in the world. They don't need to be, because they're the fastest. Before David could make another move, Dia struck at Kirianor once, twice, three times! Kirianor, wolf-formed, gave a high-pitched squeal of pain. David stumbled backward a step.

That was when I realized he was holding my baseball bat. He wasn't here for anything good. I rolled out of bed, adrenaline flooding my body. David had turned traitor.

As a dæmon, Dia didn't produce any venom. Her bites must have hurt like hell, but there was no venom flowing through Kirianor, slowing her down. Kirianor squirmed, struggling to fling Dia away. She struck again, dug in her fangs, and hung on grimly. David snarled in pain and frustration. While he was distracted, I slugged him in the face.

I was smaller than David, and I've never been a star in gym class, so it didn't break his nose or anything. But he swayed backward, and Kirianor gave a yip of pain, ceasing her struggles for a moment. Dia took the opportunity to pry her fangs free and strike again, this time at the other dæmon's face, as Asair had taught her to do.

I may have been smaller than David, and my dad wasn't a spy, but I was going to beat the traitorous son of a bitch.

Dia's fangs sank into Kirianor's nose. David cried out in pain, my baseball bat clattering to the floor as his hands flailed in reaction. Desperate to escape Dia's fangs, Kirianor became a wasp and flew up, beyond her reach. David reached out, to catch his dæmon in his hand, maybe.

But he wasn't reaching toward Kirianor. He was reaching toward Dia.

He grabbed her behind the head. She went limp. All the breath rushed out of me, and I fell to my knees.

It was as if I had woken up to find him demorphing next to me under the covers, half-roach, half-human legs squirming against my chest. But no, as horrible as that would be, that doesn't do it justice. It was as if he had cut my skull open, pulled out my brain, and ran his tongue along the crevice between the hemispheres, then licked his lips at the taste of it.

I didn't beg for him to let her go. I was beyond that. I made noises in the back of my throat that sounded more like a wounded animal than anything human. Everything in the universe was wrong, twisted, disgusting, and it wouldn't be right again until he _stopped touching her._

With his free hand – _no, no, don't look at his other hand, don't look at what he's doing with it_ – he picked up the fallen baseball bat.

As it swung toward my head, my last conscious thought was, _At least I don't have to feel this anymore._

I woke dizzy and sick, trembling from head to toe. It was only the firm pressure of Dia wrapped around me that kept me from going into a blind panic.

“ _Marco_ ,” she gasped, tightening around me convulsively. It hurt, a little, but in the best way possible. There wasn't an inch of her that wasn't touching me. Her head was tucked against my cheek, her tongue flicking out and taste-smelling my skin. “Marco, it's you, not him, _not him._ ”

I tried to speak, only to find that I'd been gagged, a pair of my own boxers stuffed in my mouth. _No, it's not him, Dia, I've got you. If he touches you again, I'll kill him, I swear,_ I thought. I couldn't reach for her either. David had found zip ties and bound my wrists and ankles. I couldn't feel anything in my hands or feet. My head was pounding from the impact of the baseball bat. But I had Dia. _I_ had her. Not him.

“Marco,” Dia said, her voice hitching horribly. “I can still feel him. His hands on me.”

_I know_. I felt it too, a phantom hand around my neck, squeezing my heart, digging through my internal organs, where it didn't belong _._ _But Dia, we have to focus. Get this gag out of my mouth, then be a rat or something and chew through these zip ties. Then I'll hold you. I'll hold you and I won't let go._

Dia trembled. Then she plucked the boxers from my mouth with her fangs and flung them to the floor. I spat out the taste of wet cloth. “Thanks, Dia. I love you.”

“Of course you do, you egomaniac,” said Dia. That made me smile. She became a rat and chewed at the zip tie around my wrists. It took a while, but it was such a relief to feel her fur rubbing against my wrists as she worked that I couldn't be irritated. When she finally parted the plastic with her teeth, the blood rushed back into my hands so fast it hurt. I yelped in pain, then quickly fell silent when I thought of what might happen if I woke up my dad. If he knew I'd been attacked and tied up in my own room, he'd call the police. He wouldn't let me out of his sight. And I needed to get free and tell Jake what had happened.

“If he hasn't gotten to Jake already,” Dia murmured before setting to work on the zip tie binding my ankles.

That made my blood run cold. David wasn't in my house anymore, that was for sure, otherwise he'd've noticed I was awake by now. But what might he do next? Would he incapacitate all the Animorphs, one by one? Would he do to do them what he'd done to us? What did he want?

_Does he need a reason?_ said Dia as she chewed. _You saw what he did to that random bird when he was in eagle morph. He likes violence for its own sake. And after what he did to us, who knows what he might be willing to do?_

_I hope we don't find out. But if he is going after one of the others now, I hope they're giving him another hell of a fight. I hope they bring him down like a rabid dog._

_I hope so too._

The sun was up by the time I got completely free of my bonds. There was no point trying to go to sleep when school was so soon – not that I could have slept anyway. For a little while, I just lay curled with Dia on my bed, and we relished each other's touch. Touch that wasn't _his_. Then I turned off my alarm before it could ring and took a shower. Unusually, Dia came in too, not wanting to lose contact with me for even a moment. Some of the feeling of uncleanness, of wrongness, drained away with the warm water. But not all.

I didn't speak in anything more than incoherent mumbles to my dad over breakfast. If he noticed that Dia wouldn't peel herself off me for even a second, he didn't say anything. He just told me to have a nice day at school, settled in with his morning paper, and let me walk out the door in silence.

It was a long walk to school. I couldn't help but wonder how many Animorphs I would see in class today – and what I would do if one were missing. It got worse when I went inside the building. The crowds of kids bustling off to their lockers made me freeze in terror for a moment. One of them was going to come too close and touch Dia. I knew it. If I took even one more step, someone's freely swinging hand would brush against her skin, and I would have to feel it all over again.

Dia became a gecko and dove under the collar of my shirt, tucked against my chest where a layer of fabric separated her from the rest of the world. Only then could I move.

_Well, that fight fucked us up even worse than most of them,_ I thought. _And it wasn't even against the Yeerks._

_No,_ Dia agreed. _It was just another kid._

It made me sick. I looked around me at all the kids shouting, giggling, running through the corridors. What kind of monsters might they become, if given the power? Why had it turned David bad, but not us? Could it corrupt one of us too? Turn us into amoral killing machines who loved nothing but violence?

Dia, thinking of Rachel, said, _Maybe._

_No. Not her. She wouldn't do… that._

Jake was waiting at my locker. I was so relieved to see him my vision swam a little with the force of it. But then I felt dread, because I would have to tell him about last night. And I didn't want to talk about that with anyone, not even him.

_Maybe better to just get it out now than let it fester,_ said Dia.

_Do we have a choice?_

“Marco. You're okay,” said Jake. Jake, for his part, did not look okay. His skin was grayish, and there were deep hollows beneath his eyes.

“Dia?” said Merlyse, a cactus wren on Jake's shoulder. “Where are you?”

Dia crawled up the inside of my shirt and poked her head out over my collar.

“If by okay you mean 'breathing',” I said. “Jake, I am _not okay_. If you're checking on me like this, you know that David's a traitor, right?”

“Right.” The hollows under his eyes seemed to deepen.

I leaned in to whisper to Jake, “He attacked me last night. I have no idea why. I fought back, like how we learned in self-defense class. I almost had him. But then…” I took a deep breath, my hand cupping Dia through my shirt. “He grabbed Dia.”

“ _What_?!” Merl exploded, so loud that several bird dæmons flying by turned their heads to see what was going on. Jake had gone white as a sheet.

“You don't know what it's like,” I said. “I couldn't fight anymore, after that. I was just… paralyzed. He knocked me out and tied me up in my closet. When I came to, he was gone. Took me the rest of the night to get free. Jake, we have to do something. He might do anything. _Anything._ ”

Merl became a fox, tucking herself under Jake's arm, burying her face in his side. “Oh, Dia,” she mumbled into Jake's polo. “I'm so sorry.”

_I'm just glad she isn't trying to comfort me or something. I don't think I could stand to be touched by anyone right now,_ Dia thought.

“Are you going to tell the others?” I asked. I hoped not. Telling Jake was one thing, but I didn't want any pity from the others.

“Marco, I have to,” Jake whispered.

“Why?”

“He nearly killed me and Ax last night.” He had sagged back against my locker for support. “We even thought he'd killed Tobias, at one point. Turns out Tobias had led him toward some other redtail's territory, figuring he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. We have no idea where he is now or what he wants. We need to come up with a plan. And we all need to know what David is capable of.”

The thing is, I knew he was right. The others needed to know that David would stop at nothing. But I still didn't want Jake to tell anyone. I couldn't let him know that, though. So instead I said, “Not to mention we still have to keep the leaders of the free world from getting infested.”

Jake nodded. “We're taking care of that today. Meet at the usual place after school, but assume that David will be listening. We're going to feed him an act, then discuss the real plan in private thought-speak as we leave.” His arm tightened around Merl, and though his face was pale and blank, I saw his jaw tighten with anger, just for a second. “Tomorrow. When the mission's over. That's when we take care of David.”

“'Take care of'?” Dia said quietly, peering out over my shirt collar. “What are we going to do? Lock him up? There's no prison that can keep him.” Her eyes narrowed. “Say what you really mean.”

“Put him down,” said Merl, as if he were a rabid dog.

In a hoarse whisper, Jake said, “Kill him.”

It was my turn to lean against my locker, the cool metal pressing into my forehead. “Almost time for class,” I said, choking out a horrible, grating laugh.

_By the time we go to school on Wednesday, we might be murderers,_ Dia thought, _so enjoy school now while you still can._

* * *

**Rachel**

“Abi?”

It took a few seconds for me to process what was going on. Merlyse was perched on Abi's gazelle horn in cactus wren form, trying to get his attention. Yeah, I was that tired.

“Mmhmm?” Abi said, as I rummaged through my locker. I had to get a folder for my next class. What was my next class again?

“Listen,” said Merl. “This is important.”

That's the thing about Merl. When she says something is important, something inside you comes to attention, no matter how exhausted you are. “I'm listening,” Abi said.

“David attacked Marco last night,” said Merl. “In his house. Marco fought back, but then…” She had to force the words out. “David grabbed Dia.”

Abi reared up on his hind legs and tossed his head, and Merl had to hang on for dear life to stay attached to his horn. I dropped the book I had in my hand. It fell to the metal floor of my locker with a clang. A surge of nausea flooded me so strongly I had to swallow hard to keep myself from vomiting. I turned around to face Jake, who was leaning against the wall at the end of my row of lockers, a set of notebooks tucked under one arm. “That sick _fuck_!” I hissed. “I swear to God I'll – ”

Jake shook his head, once, and glanced toward Abi and Merl. He wanted to keep this conversation as private as possible.

“What did he do?” Abi said urgently. “After he raped Marco?”

I saw Jake flinch a little at that.

“Call it what it is,” Abi said. “It's rape, plain and simple. Look it up in the law books.”

My blood boiled. Marco, who'd had a bad feeling about David from the beginning. Marco, who'd almost gotten stuck in flea morph on Sunday. We'd be cowards not to name this crime against him what it was, and Marco deserved better than that.

“You're right,” said Merl. She sounded just as tired as I was. But she had enough energy for the embers of anger to smolder beneath the blanket of fatigue.

But it was more than embers now, at least for me. “I'm going to kill him,” said Abi. “I'm going to tear him to pieces.”

Immediately, he wished he hadn't said it. It just confirmed everything Jake believed about me. That I was a bloodthirsty killer, a ravening beast that he could unleash on his enemies. But it was too late now.

“You can't just go after him,” said Merl. “We don't even know where he is. We need a plan.”

She was being perfectly reasonable. But I didn't feel reasonable. “Just wait. If he shows his face, he's dead meat.”

The bell rang for class. Jake gave me one last, lingering look, then went off to second period. It was only a churning mix of nausea, rage, and hunger that kept me going until lunch.

Abineng didn't take a small form as usually does when we go to the cafeteria. He stayed in gazelle form, poking me with a horn once in a while when I got too zoned out. Who cared, anyway? Let all the other dæmons give Abi some space. I didn't even tell the lunch ladies what I wanted as I stopped along the food line. I just nodded dully until they picked something for me. It was all just slop, anyway, just in different colors.

On autopilot, I found Cassie and sat down across from her. She looked way more awake than me, poking at her food with a bit of enthusiasm, even. But her eyes were distant, like she was thinking about something far away.

Jake sat down next to me and grunted a greeting. I spooned some green slop in my mouth, then said to Jake, “You tell her?”

“Mmm,” said Jake.

Quincy, on Cassie's shoulder in his usual bat form, huddled against her neck. “Yeah.”

Well, no wonder Cassie looked like she was a million miles away. Finding out about what David did to Marco last night did that to me too, and I'd never gone through it myself, not like Cassie had in that first terrible battle at the Yeerk pool.

That was when Marco came toward us. But I knew right away that something was wrong. He had a lanyard around his neck with the indestructible capsule people use to protect their insect dæmons. But Diamanta never takes insect forms: only amphibians, reptiles, and the occasional bird. So why would Marco be wearing an insect dæmon lanyard?

_Because he isn't Marco,_ said Abi, spotting the real Marco in line for food, Dia wrapped around his arm as a ball python.

I felt sick. Abi had to hold on to the back of my shirt with his teeth to keep me from attacking David right then and there. David had raped Marco, and now he had stolen his body. He was no better than a Yeerk. Worse, even, because he was doing it to someone of his own species, someone who had fought for him and alongside him.

Jake must have come to the same conclusion I had, because before the fake Marco could say a word, Jake growled, “David, I presume.”

Cassie, too, had spotted the real Marco in line for food. She got up. “I'll stop him.”

Yeah. Two Marcos at one table might set off a few Controller alarm bells.

“What do you want?” Jake demanded. Merl was a coyote behind him, snarling. It took me a moment to realize that Abi had become a full-grown antelope, forcing the kids at the table behind me to make room.

David smirked. “What? No small talk? No chit-chat?”

I couldn't morph, not in a crowded cafeteria. And Abi couldn't attack David, because Kirianor wasn't there, and Abi's not a disgusting freak like David who goes around _touching_ people the way they should never be touched. But I could reach for my fork. Tighten my fist around it and imagine how much blood I could draw with it.

Finally, Jake and Cassie managed to get David to tell us what he wanted. The blue box, so he could sell us out to Visser Three to get his parents back. He would give us up, and our families too, so he could get his back. Condemn us to a fate worse than death.

_I won't give him a fate worse than death, when I get my chance,_ I thought. _I'll make it quick. It's more than he deserves._

So when David got up to leave, I went after him. Abineng didn't bother changing form. We were going after David, and everyone else was going to make way.

Cassie grabbed my arm. “Rachel, what are you doing?”

Jake was staring at David. In his eyes, I saw hatred for what David had done to his best friend. “Let her go,” he said.

I followed David's back. All around me, dæmons grumbled and kids flipped me off as Abi forced his way through the crowd, his antelope's bulk taking up the space of three people. I didn't care. I kept pace with him, as his body shifted under Marco's clothing, stretching it tight across a broader frame. By the time he was out on the quad, Kirianor had appeared, trotting beside him as a lioness.

I caught up with him and grabbed him by the shoulder, spinning him around to face me. I could hear the blood thundering through my head. I was exhausted and enraged and sickened and I wanted him to _hurt_.

“You looking for a fight right here?” said David.

“Why not?” Anything, anything, to let loose this thunder pounding through my head.

“You would never morph here in the open.”

Abineng lowered his head and scuffed a hoof along the ground. He was dark-furred, magnificent, his face patterned with elegant swoops of white, his horns sweeping in five foot long arcs from his head. “I don't need a morph to handle you.”

Kirianor bared her teeth and laughed. “I don't know if you've noticed, Abineng, but you're an antelope. Lions _eat_ antelope.”

“Is that how you think it works? Haven't you learned _anything_?” My face split into a terrible grimace that might have been a smile. “Listen to me, David, because I've been morphing for a long time, and I know more about animals than you ever will. My battle morphs are elephant and grizzly. I've felt their minds, and I know which one I admire more. Grizzlies, the predators, they're cowards. They're powerful, but when the odds are against them, they back down. They pick the fights they know they can win. They're bullies, not fighters, and every time I face down an army of Hork-Bajir, all the grizzly wants to do is run. But elephants? When a lion attacks, they fight to protect themselves and the herd, and they don't stop fighting until the threat is gone. They don't pick battles with weaklings or back away if they might lose. They just _fight._

“And there's one more thing I know that you don't. Abineng is a sable antelope. And sable antelope _kill_ lions.”

Abineng lunged before Kirianor could react. With a sweep of his horns, he sent her flying backward. He ran after her and pinned her to the ground with his hooves on her chest, head bent so that she'd gore herself on his horns if she tried to move. David went pale, trembling with his dæmon's pain.

“If you try to sell us out to Visser Three,” I said, my voice level, but with that terrible smile poisoning every word, “we'll know. We have sources inside the organization. Like the sources that told us about the plans at the world leaders' summit.”

“And what are you going to do about it, huh?” said David, gritting his teeth through the pain.

“You're right,” I said. “Even if we were warned, we wouldn't last long.” I leaned close to whisper in his ear. “But some of us would last a while, you rapist sack of shit. Long enough to make sure your parents… well, use your imagination.”

David drew back to take a swing at me. But we were expecting that. Abineng picked up a hoof and stomped on Kirianor's chest, hard. David gasped with the pain, and I was able to bat away his fist as if it were a little kid's. Kirianor collapsed into snake form, slithering out from between Abi's legs back toward David.

“You want a war between you and us, that's one thing. We'll play that out," I snarled. "But you try and sell us out to Visser Three, and your little family will never get put back together again. Never!"

I turned and walked away, Abineng keeping pace behind me. I was shaking, the blood pounding through my head even worse than before. The adrenaline made me feel both high as a kite and so exhausted I could lay down in the grass right there and never get up.

Abineng caught up to me. In this form, he was taller than I was, so I wrapped my arm around his neck, as much to stay standing as for comfort. “Why did he tell Cassie to let me go, Abi? Did he want this? Did he know?”I thought of the look in Jake's eyes when he told Cassie to let us go after him. He'd wanted to get back at David for what he did last night, but he couldn't attack him in the middle of the cafeteria.

“So he sent us instead,” Abi said, finishing the thought. “You're not ashamed, are you? Of what I did?”

“No.” As bad as it was, letting David just walk away would have been worse. “I just… I want to know what Jake sees. When he looks at us. Does he really see us? Or a weapon?” We got to the entrance back into the building. Through frosted glass windows, I could see the hallway filling up with people going back to their lockers before next period. “Be something else, Abi. It's getting crowded.”

“I don't want to,” he said.

I gave him a look.

“I could,” he said. “But I don't want to. Not today. Maybe not ever.” He shrugged, as much as an antelope can shrug. “We'll see.”

I flashed back to Abi holding down a lioness with his hooves, horns poised to dig into her throat. “This form? You think so?”

“I'm not completely sure. But I think so.” He turned and faced me. “What you said to David about predators and prey – it was true. We're like prey. We fight, no matter what the odds. We fight what's supposed to kill us, until it backs down or we kill it first. And yeah, let's face it, we're scary as hell. But is any of that going to change? We can try to deny it. Or we can deal with it.”

“Deal with it,” I said, with no hesitation. “But how?”

“I don't know.”

I opened the door. The chaos of jostling people I'd seen through the frosted glass wall came to life, kids scuffling or running or dragging their feet, dæmons flying or walking on two legs or four.

A tall blonde girl and her great dark antelope dæmon joined them. And none of them knew what that meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out this awesome [fanart](http://featherquillpen.tumblr.com/post/132366440427/check-out-this-amazing-fanart-of-rachel-and-her) by SailorPtah of Rachel and Abineng in his new settled form!
> 
> What Rachel said about sable antelopes is true. I've lived in South Africa and seen them for myself. They're impressive creatures, and the biologists and rangers I met there told me that lions don't mess with sable antelope unless they're desperate for prey. A quote from a Namibia tourism website:
> 
> “Although lions are regarded as ‘kings of the wild’ and mighty hunters, sable antelope will generally be the last choice of prey, as these creatures possess long and dangerous horns which are often lethal.”


	3. Tremble, Little Lion Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Tremble for yourself my man,_  
>  you know that you have seen this all before.  
> Tremble, little lion man,  
> you'll never settle any of your scores.  
> Your grace is wasted on your face,  
> your boldness stands alone among the wreck.  
> Now learn from your mother  
> Or spend your days biting your own neck.  
> – from “Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons

**Rachel**

When my mom came to check on me in the morning to see why I hadn't gotten up, I didn't even have to pretend to be sick to get my mom to call the school and tell them I couldn't go. I must have looked as pathetic as I felt. I took a minute to check my anti-David precautions – window closed and locked, Abineng by the door – and fell back asleep. 

I woke up at one o'clock to the rumbling of my empty stomach. I got up, brushed my teeth, then went downstairs to heat up some leftovers. After I'd eaten, I grabbed an encyclopedia from my mom's study and went back to my room to do some more research. If Abineng was considering sable antelope as a settled form, then I wanted us to know as much as possible about it. 

Sable antelope are one of the biggest antelope. As I told David, they're famous for killing lions. When a lion attacks a herd of sable antelope, the dominant bull will defend the herd, attacking the lion until it dies or it's wounded enough that everyone can escape. The bulls fight with each other for dominance, though those fights are never bad enough for serious injury. It's more like posturing to show their strength. It reminded me of the way Marco and I are always trying to take each other down, except we don't really mean to hurt each other. Their social life is flexible: they stick to small groups during the wet season and join into huge herds in the dry season. Appearance is important to them, the dark coat of the adult bull with its distinctive white markings signaling its status. 

I went back downstairs around three o'clock to pour myself a glass of juice. As I wandered back out of the kitchen, I could see through the front window that Jordan was walking home. A shaggy little mutt was following her, nipping playfully at her heels and making her laugh as it leaped up and tried to lick her face. Her dæmon, Tseycal, was riding on the dog's back as a canary. 

Jordan unlocked the front door. “Hi, Rachel!” she said, bending down to rub the dog's head. “Look who followed me home from school! He's such a nice little dog.” 

«Nice little sister you've got, Rach,» said the dog. «Her dæmon even played chase with me.» 

My blood turned to ice, then lava. I thought of Marco. This disgusting creature was _molesting my sister_ and she didn't even know it. I didn't care if Kirianor was in there with David. He was _touching_ Tseycal. “Don't bring him inside,” I said through clenched teeth. 

“He isn't dirty or anything,” Jordan protested. 

“He's not coming inside and that's final.” I stepped outside and closed the front door. Abineng snorted and scuffed his hoof along the floor, to remind David that he could crush him with one stomp. 

«What's wrong, Rachel? Afraid I'll crap on your carpet?» 

Jordan sat on the step up to the porch and rubbed behind David's ears. “You're such a cutie, yes you are!” 

Tseycal fluttered from David's back to Jordan's shoulder. I relaxed by a hair. “Don't you wish we had a dog, Abineng?” he said. 

“What's the point?” Abineng snapped, his gaze never wavering from David. He was quivering with the effort of keeping himself from stomping him to a pulp. “If you like dogs so much, why don't you just be one?” 

“Fine.” Tseycal became a rough collie. “Why do you have to be so grumpy?” 

«Yeah, Rachel. Why so grumpy? You think maybe your sister's caught on to how much of a psycho bitch you are?» 

“Jordan,” I said. My hands twitched with urge to tighten around David's doggy neck. “Why don't you come inside and have a snack?” 

My sister rolled her eyes. “God, Rachel, I'm not going to get rabies and die. Stop worrying.” 

«Yeah, Rachel. There's no need for Jordan to worry. Your family is perfectly safe. As long as you get me the blue box.» 

“You let it lick you. You don't know where that tongue's been. So stop being smart with me and go wash your hands. And your face, too, while you're at it.” 

«By the end of tomorrow, Rachel. At the construction site. I'll have the box by midnight tomorrow, or, well…» David bared his teeth, then licked Jordan's throat. «Use your imagination.» 

I stared at the shiny spot on Jordan's neck where David had licked it. I thought about his teeth so near her throat and tried not to shudder. 

“And now you have to wash your neck, too. Let's go in,” I said. _Don't give away the fear,_ Abi murmured in my mind. _Or he'll have won._

I opened the door, Abi and I blocking the entrance with our bodies so David couldn't go in after Jordan. For a moment I considered staying outside and killing him right then and there. But no, I had to look after Jordan first. Once we were both inside, I slammed the door behind me. 

Jordan washed up at the kitchen sink and chattered about her day. I only half-listened, most of my attention with Abi as he watched our front yard through the window. David was sauntering away, tail wagging. He kept watching until David was out of sight. 

“Tell Mom I'm going to visit Cassie,” I said. “Don't open the front door for anyone or anything until she gets home.” 

“Ugh, fine. You're just as bad as Mom, you know. I know what to do when I'm home alone.” 

I could have flown to Cassie's place, but I decided to throw some shorts over my morphing outfit and bike instead. I pedaled as hard as I could, flying down the streets, sweating under my clothes. Abineng ran alongside me, muscles flexing beneath his dark fur. The physical effort kept us from thinking. All we could feel was the burn. 

I propped my bike up against the barn. For a moment I just stood there, holding onto Abi for support, catching my breath. Then I opened the barn door. Cassie was there, updating charts next to the cages. Quincy was a bat on her shoulder – a vampire bat. What did that mean? But there was no time to wonder about that now. She turned to look at me. She took in the flush on my face, my heavy breathing. “My room?” she said. 

“Yeah.” 

Cassie stopped by the kitchen first to pour me a glass of water. I drank half of it in one gulp. She filled it up again, and I took the glass with me up the stairs to her bedroom in the attic. Fortunately, the stairs were wide enough and the ceilings high enough to accommodate Abineng. 

First things first. As soon as I closed Cassie's bedroom door behind me, I said, “We have to morph.” 

“Morph? Why? Morph what?” 

“Because David could have followed me here, and I don't want him to eavesdrop. We need thought-speech, now.” 

“Would you – would you mind morphing human? You have my permission,” Cassie said, holding out her arm. “Whatever you have to say to me – I want to see your expressions while you say it.” 

It was a weird request, but coming from Cassie, I could understand it. She's good at reading people. If I morphed an animal, she might lose something important. So I grabbed Cassie's arm and focused on her face, so familiar and dear to me. Quincy went slack in the acquiring trance, his wings drooping. Cassie's eyes fluttered shut. Then it was over. 

Cassie morphed me as I morphed her. Quincy and Abineng disappeared. I stared into a mirror. It was creepy, but maybe Cassie was right. Maybe it would be easier to talk to a human face, even if it was my own. 

There were a lot of things I wanted to say to Cassie. But the first thing that burst out was Abi saying, «David wasn't lying.» 

«What?» said Quincy. «What do you mean?» 

«Last night, when he said I threatened his parents,» I said. «It was true. When I followed him outside at lunch, and you tried to stop me, it was to intimidate him. I couldn't just let him walk away. I needed to show him he didn't have power over us. Over me.» I sat down in Cassie's desk chair and buried my face in my hands, if only to block out the sight of my own face. 

«I attacked Kirianor,» Abi said flatly. «I kicked her and pinned her to the ground until she whimpered in pain. Then Rachel told David that if he sold us out to Visser Three we'd go after his parents.» 

«And now he's after mine,» I said. All I could see was the deep brown of Cassie's hands over my eyes. «It's my fault.» 

«Did you mean it?» said Quincy. «What you said to him?» 

I let my hands fall, though I was still leaning forward, elbows propped on my thighs. I wanted to tell Cassie I didn't mean it. I wanted to tell her I'd just said it to scare him, to show him who was boss. Instead, I said, «If he sold us out? If he sentenced all of us to death, our families to slavery? If I had to watch the Controllers haul you off to the Yeerk Pool?» I stared at my face, so soft, nothing like the harsh expression that was twisting the face I wore. «I think I might do anything.» 

«And what did he do?» said Cassie. So strange, to hear those words coming from “me,” without my lips moving. 

«That's it? 'What did he do?' You're not gonna tell me what I did was wrong? No moral lecture?» 

«Rachel,» Cassie sat down on her bed and leaned toward me. «What you did wasn't a good thing. It's not something I would want you do. But what if you hadn't done it? Maybe he would have sold us out to Visser Three. Maybe you made it about us and him instead of about the Yeerks. Maybe you saved us and our families from capture. Don't you see? I meant what I said that day at the Gardens. I'm done judging you for the way you choose to fight. I don't have any more of the answers than you do. If you do something I really think is wrong, I'll tell you. And I hope you'll do the same for me. You did a bad thing, but it's David who's forced us to bad things. Or worse than usual, anyway. So tell me: what did he do?» 

I sat there stunned for a moment. Cassie really had changed since she crossed enemy lines to befriend Aftran. I'd just been too wrapped up in my own problems to see it. Finally, I said, «He followed Jordan home from school in dog morph. Pretending to be some friendly stray. He was playing with Tseycal. Letting him perch on him. That sick fuck. I know Kirianor's in there too, but… it's just _wrong_. Cassie, he _molested_ her. And she didn't even know what was being done to her.» 

«He struck back at you,» Cassie said. «Showing you he has the same power over you as you have over him.» 

«He said he wants the blue box by midnight tomorrow. We can't let him have it. Who knows what he'd do with it?» I laced my fingers in front of my mouth, as if to block the terrible words, even though I wasn't saying them aloud. «But if we don't give it to him, he's going to go after my family first. I'm sure of it.» 

Cassie reached toward me and took my hands in hers. No, her hands in mine, long slender fingers enveloping thick callused ones. «That's not going to happen. I'm going to a find a way to stop him.» 

I stared at her, at the girl who spoke from behind my face. «You?» 

Cassie's grip on my hands was gentle, but her face was determined. It was a look I've seen many times in the mirror. «Me. Demorph, go downstairs and call Jake. Tell him we're meeting in the barn at five-thirty. Fly out and tell Ax and Tobias. Tell Tobias to lay low, so David doesn't see he's alive, and tell Ax to come in human morph twenty minutes early. Then relax for a bit and make a sandwich or something. I'll be back.» 

«Back? Where are you going?» 

«Out. I have some thinking to do.» 

_I'm getting the feeling,_ Abineng said slowly, _that this is what Cassie's like when she's dangerous._

It was a strangely reassuring feeling. However much David scared me, my best friend was scarier. 

How had it taken me so long to notice?

* * *

**Cassie**

In my own body once more, I held Quincy before me in my cupped hands. _First things first,_ I said, as soon as I was sure Rachel was out of earshot. _David's targeting Rachel's family. Her little sisters._ I heard my voice quake with the rage rippling beneath it. _What are we willing to do to stop him?_

_Cassie, he's going after children. Innocent children._ He bared his pointed fangs. The fangs of a vampire bat. _Whatever it takes._

I let out a shaky breath. _OK, then. Whatever it takes._ I licked my lips nervously. _So, next up: what do we know about David? Advantages, weaknesses?_

_He's clever. He doesn't have to show up to school or be home in time for dinner, so he could be anywhere at any time. But his biggest advantage – if you can call it that – is that he has no limits. Rachel says she'd do anything for revenge, but that's not true. She wouldn't violate someone to win a fight, like David did to Marco. But David? Any weapon within reach, he'll use._

_And weaknesses?_

_His obsession with Rachel. He doesn't want to follow our rules or be subject to our control in any way. But with Rachel, it's personal. She terrifies him, so he wants to terrify her. He wants to prove to himself that she doesn't really frighten him. That he can beat her._

_That is a weakness,_ I said. _But it's not his biggest weakness._

_His family. He still believes, somewhere in his heart, that he can save them._

We stared at each other for a good long while, dark schemes slowly building up between us. Quincy said, _Let's call her._

“OK,” I said. I picked up the phone in my room and listened to make sure Rachel was done with her phone call to Jake. There was nothing but a dial tone. I dialed the number from memory. 

“Hello. Delia Nguyen speaking.” 

“Hi. It's Cassie. Listen, Delia. This is urgent. I need to meet you in town. Say, Garden Street and Jefferson? Be _careful_ ,though.” I prayed she would read into it what I meant: don't be Delia Nguyen. Project a different hologram. 

“All right,” said Delia. “By the hot dog truck, let's say?” 

There is no hot dog truck at Garden Street and Jefferson. But David is new in town, and he wouldn't know that. Delia had caught on. “Yeah. I'll see you there.” 

I morphed osprey, took the short flight to the intersection I'd named, and demorphed in a nearby alley. When I got to the corner, there was a hot dog truck. It looked run-down and greasy, probably to discourage people from actually trying to buy hot dogs. 

“Come on in,” said Delia, in a voice I knew only I could hear. I stepped straight into the hot dog truck as if it were an open door. All around me, there would be a hologram disguising what I'd done. Inside the hot dog truck, standing on Garden Street, was a two-legged dog made of interlocking chrome parts. Inside the dog, though I could not see her, was a Yeerk suspended in a tiny tank, hooked up to the Chee by tiny wires. 

“Thank you, Delia,” I said. “I really needed this. Is there any chance I can speak to Aftran privately?” 

“Of course.” Delia's head opened up, a million electronic parts telescoping outward. In the middle was the tank that held Aftran. I transferred Quincy to one hand, reached into the tank with the other, and pressed her to my ear. 

I'm used to it by now. The brief pain, the burst of numbness, the new presence in my thoughts. Aftran didn't take over my body, as most Yeerks do when they infest a host, but she absorbed all the new experiences I'd had since we'd last been together this way. It was only the work of a moment for Aftran to know everything I knew about David and the terrible situation we were in. It took longer than a moment for her to process it all. I could sense her surprise and concern. 

_We need to stop him,_ I said. I _need to stop him. Because he'll go after Rachel and her family first, and she's my best friend._

_And you have ideas._ Aftran was trying to sound neutral, but I knew better. She had seen one of my plans and she wasn't happy about it. 

_Aftran, I don't want to kill him. Even after all he's done. That's not a line I want to cross. I don't know how I'd – I just don't. So I thought, what if there was a way to trap him in morph? Some morph that couldn't cause trouble. Like… a fish in a pond somewhere._

_A fish in a pond somewhere,_ said Aftran, her rage barely in check now. _Trapped. Like a Yeerk in a pool somewhere, maybe. All the senses you've come to know and love, sight and sound and touch, stripped away. But it's worse than that. No family, no friends, no one to talk to. Just the slowly encroaching madness. Tell me, Cassie. If you had a Yeerk captive, would you keep it in a pool by itself with a Kandrona supply, for the rest of its life?_

I bit my lip, but I had no reply. 

_I've been learning about your government and its laws. What you propose is solitary confinement for life, which is considered a cruel and unusual punishment._ Torture. _And that's not even factoring in that you want to trap him in a body he will find confining and possibly disgusting. Forced to hunt insects or eat garbage for a meal. To live in fear of being eaten by a predator. You humans can't even remember a time when you had to fear predators. Before Prince Seerow freed us from our planet, we lived in fear of the_ Vanarx _. I know Yeerks who are old enough to remember. I've heard the stories. Don't you realize what you intend to do?_

_I know it's wrong_ , I said, desperately. _There's nothing right about it. But if we kill him, there's no turning back for us. That makes us murderers._

_So you'd rather make yourself and your friends into torturers. You would rather live every day knowing that somewhere, the boy is in torment, and by your design._

My head spun. I wanted to throw up. Quincy dug his fangs into my finger, just to distract me from the nausea screaming in my gut. Aftran was right. It was torture, or death. _I don't want to be a murderer,_ I said, feeling very small. _I don't think I could live with myself._

_I was a torturer,_ Aftran said, her voice ringing harshly behind my eyes. _I tortured three hosts, every day for years. A Gedd, Rrrd'n. A Hork-Bajir, Sheka Pexet. A human, Karen. They had some hope of escape, and even then they begged me for death. Yes, even little Karen, sometimes. David would have no hope. He would be trapped forever. I live with what I did every day. Sometimes I wish it were three murders weighing on me instead of what I really did. I live with it._ Her voice broke into a ragged edge. _But I don't want to live to see you become a torturer too._

I cried. I pressed Quincy to my face and cried into his fur. I didn't even care that Delia the Chee was standing there watching me. _I don't want to be a murderer,_ I thought over and over. 

_I don't want to be worse than a murderer,_ Quincy replied. 

When the sobs racking my body finally ceased, my head was pounding and I still felt like I might throw up. But heaven help me, I had a plan. I knew how to lure David to his doom. 

_No, not to his doom,_ said Quincy. _Let's not sugarcoat it. We're leading him to his death._

_It's a ruthless plan,_ said Aftran. _One that any Yeerk would be proud of._ My head rang with her bitter laughter. _It might even work._

_Thank you, Aftran,_ I said hoarsely. _What I'm going to do – it's so terrible I can't stand it. But I think you stopped me from doing something worse._

_If you need anything – after. You can visit me. I can – I can bear witness._

She could bear witness, better than anyone. She could seep into my mind and see and feel everything I did. She could share the burden, truly and completely. It would be more than I deserved. 

_OK. I'll let you know._ I held my hand up to my ear. There was a strange emptying sensation as she slithered out into my palm. I put her back in the tank, which closed away into Delia's head. 

“Thanks again, Delia. I needed that. I really did. Let me know if there's anything I can do for you in return.” 

“I've come to respect Aftran very much, sharing a body with her,” said Delia. “She cares about you. That's enough to recommend you.” 

I walked back out of the hot dog truck hologram. The next time I saw Aftran, I would be a murderer. 

The plan began like this: 

We met in my barn and acknowledged our defeat. After much arguing – and several blows to Rachel's ego – we decided to reassemble the box from its scattered components and meet David at the construction site at midnight the next day. Then, as we all left, we got via private thought-speech the instructions I'd told Ax before the meeting, that he'd committed to his prodigious memory. 

It went on like this: 

Jake raided his garage for old electronic junk and spare parts and met Ax in the woods. Ax used an old graphing calculator and some other parts to jury-rig a device that, when it detected motion, would display this message: 

GREETINGS, HUMAN. I HAVE BEEN EXPECTING YOUR RETURN. I AM PREPARED TO NEGOTIATE AN EXCHANGE FOR ANY INFORMATION YOU HAVE REGARDING THE ANDALITE BANDITS. AT 7:30 AM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME, GO TO THE INTERSECTION OF MAIN STREET AND ELLIOTT. THERE IS A BLOCK OF PRIMITIVE HUMAN MACHINES YOU REFER TO AS PAY PHONES. PICK UP THE RECEIVER ON THE SECOND PAY PHONE FROM THE LEFT. THE STREETS WILL BE ACTIVE AT THIS TIME AS HUMANS HURRY TO THEIR EMPLOYMENT. YOUR SAFETY IN NUMBERS IS GUARANTEED. I MAY BE IN ANY MORPH. ANY ATTEMPT TO ATTACK ME WILL BE FUTILE. 

Five Andalite bandits attempted an attack on David's house. They were forced to make an immediate retreat when Hork-Bajir swarmed out of the truck sitting across the street. Amidst the confusion, no one noticed the bald eagle that deposited a small device on David's roof. 

This is what happened next: 

On his commute to work, the Yeerk who controlled Mike Finley allowed his host to doze off, as he did every morning on the seven a.m. bus. He never noticed the short boy with the frog dæmon on his shoulder whose hand briefly brushed his shoulder while he slept. 

And the next step: 

When David, morphed as a man with an insect dæmon who was no doubt unconscious and naked in his own closet, picked up the receiver on the second pay phone from the left, at precisely 7:30 a.m., a thought-speak voice said, «What information do you have, human?» 

David pretended to sort through his pockets for change. «Plenty.» 

«Tell me, human, if you ever wish to see your parents again!» 

«This is a negotiation, not a chance for you to threaten me,» said David, coming up with change and pushing it into the slot. «I want guarantees. A show of good will.» 

«You remain alive, human, and so do your parents. That is enough good will.» 

«Fine, then,» said David. He hit the coin return. His change jangled in the return slot. He fished out the coins and tucked them back in his pocket. He put down the receiver. «I'll walk away. With the morphing power, I can go anywhere.» 

«Wait!» Ax snapped. David turned around and picked the receiver back up, a faint smirk on his face. «I will meet you at a warehouse at the edge of this city. I will wait outside with a guard and the Yeerks assigned to your parents in a fluid suspension, so you may see that they are not Controllers. You will not be harmed, unless you attempt to escape with them. Then you may consider our arrangement – and your life – forfeit. Are these terms acceptable?» 

«They are.» 

Ax gave him the address of the abandoned warehouse and the time they were to meet. David “hung up” the phone. 

«Nice doing business with you, Visser.» 

And then: 

The Yeerk who controlled June Finley was unlucky enough to have a host with a caffeine addiction. So if her host body became somewhat foggy-minded while waiting in line at the coffee shop next to her office building, why, there was no reason to suspect anything unusual. 

As for the rest, well, maybe I ought to be the one to tell that story. After all, I'm the one who made it possible. But whether it's out of respect for my best friend's perspective, or my own cowardice, I'm going to hand it over to Rachel. 

* * *

**Rachel**

After school, Jake, Marco, Cassie and I each had something to do. Marco had to find clothes that fit his new morph. Cassie had to acquire her morph. And Jake and I, we had to go acquire ours. 

“Abi,” said Merl, badger-formed, as we walked to the Gardens. “You've been an antelope all day. Even in crowded corridors. Every time I've seen you.” 

“Yeah,” said Abi. 

“So,” said Merl, carefully, “are you going to have to start taking classes downstairs next semester?” 

Abi could play dumb, but he knew what Merl meant. The kids who settle as large animals take classes on the basement level of the school, where there are fewer people and less chance of a human and a large dæmon bumping into each other by accident. “Probably,” he said. 

“And that's… fine with you?” 

“Of course it's fine with me,” said Abi. “It's who we are. No point wishing we were something else.” 

I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, it's not like you have any illusions about who I am, Jake.” 

Jake's face went grim. “What do you mean?” 

“'Get Rachel,' you told Ax. 'Let her go,' you told Cassie. Whenever you need your dirty work done, you call me. Sable antelope kill lions, you know. You call the lion-killer.” 

“I didn't know.” Jake paused awkwardly. “About the sable antelope, I mean.” 

“But you knew about the rest.” 

“What do you want me to say, Rachel? That I should have asked Ax to get Marco or Cassie instead? You would have been mad at me for leaving you out of the fight if I'd done that. That I should have let David just walk away thinking he could sell us out to Visser Three without consequences? That I should have threatened him myself?” 

“So you knew,” I spat. “You knew that David wasn't lying last night.” 

“Yeah. I knew. But it wasn't the time to explain that. Should I have just taken a break from the fight to tell everyone why it was necessary?” 

“Why it was necessary to use me as a weapon?” I said. Abi snorted and stomped as I glared at Jake. 

“I had to use somebody,” Jake said. “I always do. That's my job. And yeah, Rachel, maybe you are good at this. There's something dark inside you that likes it. The fighting. The rest of us don't. We're in it for our own reasons. But you're here because you love the fight. That's what makes you brave. That's what makes you dangerous to the Yeerks.” 

“And that's why you used me. Because you thought it would make me dangerous to David too.” 

“Because I thought he'd be afraid of you. This isn't all there is to you. We know there's more to you than that darkness, a lot more. But he doesn't see all that. All he sees is your addiction to the fight.” 

My mouth went dry. “And that's what you see.” 

“Yes.” He made eye contact with me, finally. “But I see everything else too. I see how much joy you find in life. I've found that harder and harder to find, but you still can. I see how you try to be a friend to Cassie. I see that you took this, this thing you have, and you've used it for good. You didn't go rogue like David and decide you could use the morphing power however you want. You don't _rape_ people, Rachel. You have that rage, but you turn it against the ones who deserve it. The Yeerks.” 

“Just like how you use people, but for a good cause.” I laughed bitterly. “Amazing what you end up doing, for a good cause.” 

“Rachel, I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you.” 

“How?” 

We had arrived at the gate of the Gardens, and the foot traffic was getting thicker. Merl became a cactus wren and perched on Abi's head. In his ear, she said, “One of us has to be the killer. That's how the plan goes. But it's not going to be you.” 

“What?” said Abi. 

“That's right. This will be our responsibility. Our burden to bear. I get the killer morph, you get the other. I've already made you into a weapon. I'm not going to make you into a murderer.” 

“Are you sure?” I said, facing Jake. I didn't want Jake to be a murderer either, but it was his choice to make. 

“Of course I'm not sure.” Jake swallowed hard. “The thought makes me sick inside. But I'll do it.” 

I pulled Jake into a hug. “Thank you,” I said into his shoulder. “Thank you.” 

* * *

**Rachel**

I savored the hours before our ambush as if they were my last hours on earth. In a way, they were. They were my last hours without premeditated murder on my conscience, even if I didn't have to deal the killing blow. 

When I got home, I made peanut butter and fluff sandwiches for Jordan and Sara, with the crusts cut off, just the way they like them. I listened to them tell me about their days at school while Abi played with Tseycal and Zyanya. Finally, my mom came out of her office to tell us to go do our homework. I went upstairs and listened to loud, thrashy music while doing my homework. I couldn't even hear when my mom called me down for dinner. Thankfully, Abi did. 

The dinner was basic. My mom doesn't have time for anything more than that. But I barely even noticed. I asked my mom about her latest court case. There was only so much she could tell me, what with lawyer-client confidentiality, but she always makes even boring cases sound like the Crusades come again. I helped her clear the table and wash up. 

Abi was looking at the clock. _It's time._

“Hey, mom?” I said. “I was having trouble with the geometry homework. I'm gonna go to Melissa's and see if she can help.” 

“All right, honey,” Mom said. “Don't come home too late.” 

I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. “I won't, Mom.” 

If I came back late from this, I wasn't going to be coming back at all. With that in mind, Abi gave my mom's dæmon, Caedhren, who was standing on the countertop, an affectionate nudge with his nose. The blue jay dæmon chirped at him. 

I went outside as if to go down the street toward Melissa's house, then doubled back to my backyard and morphed owl. If David was following me through the sky, I'd be able to see. There was no sign of him. 

I flew in through a broken window in the abandoned warehouse. Everyone was there except for Marco. 

As I demorphed, I saw Jake and Merlyse pacing back and forth in time. “Where is he? We were all supposed to get here two hours early.” 

«Is it really that important to be here an hour early?» said Tobias. 

“Yes. David will probably scout out the location before he goes in. He can't see us here. What if David decided to go after him again?” I could practically hear his teeth grinding even as my owl hearing disappeared. 

«Who, me? No way I'd let that creep take me again. From now on, I'm staying in porcupine form. Touch me and you get a handful of prickles.» An osprey soared in and landed among us. 

“All right, everyone,” said Jake. “Fly morph, with Ax outside as an owl. When he gives the signal, demorph and morph into your game face.” 

As soon as he was fully human, Marco said, “How do we know he isn't watching us now?” 

“Ax left a distraction at David's house,” Jake said. “He broke into a smoke alarm and programmed it to go off a few minutes ago. David's parents are at a Sharing meeting, so they won't know what's going on, but there should be fire trucks heading toward his house right now. When David sees that, he'll go check it out. Once he sees that his parents aren't home and everything's fine, then he'll probably come and check this place out.” He started to morph, bristly fly hairs bursting out of his skin. 

“And all he'll see is an empty warehouse,” said Marco. 

“Up until ten minutes before the appointed time,” said Cassie. “Then he'll see an Andalite and a Hork-Bajir come in here and open that crate.” She pointed at a huge old wooden crate in a corner of the warehouse. 

«And then he'll see us,» I said, already mostly fly. 

Five of us flew into the crate, squeezing into gaps between slats of wood. Somewhere overhead, Ax was flying out the window. We all demorphed inside the crate, curled in on ourselves against the slight evening chill. 

Abineng folded his legs and lay on the floor. I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his fur. No one made conversation. Why would we? I'm sure they were all thinking the same thing I was. Imagining what we were about to do. 

I thought about the morphs Jake and I had acquired. Cassie's instructions designated Jake's morph as the killer morph. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my morph was just as deadly. 

_It's a prey animal, like me,_ Abineng thought. _But it can kill._

_No one ever expects the prey animals,_ I thought. 

_It's because they do it to protect themselves and their social groups,_ thought Abi, _not for food. For some reason, people overlook that._

_Is that really it? Do we really do it for that, not for the thrill of the hunt?_

Abi thought about attacking Kirianor. The rush of fierce joy he'd left when he'd had her at his mercy. _I did want to hurt her. I wanted to kill her. But I wanted to kill her because of what they'd done. Because he'd tried to murder Tobias. Because he'd raped Marco. That's why I wanted to do it. To get him back for what he did._

I wanted to laugh. _We are bloodthirsty and twisted. But we're bloodthirsty and twisted on their behalf. And maybe because we are, they don't have to be._

_But if we let Jake do this, then he'll have to be._

I thought of the sable bull, fighting off the lion so the rest of the herd could get away. _No. We should do it. Not because it'd feel good, because at this point, there's no way it will. Not because we want the violence. But because Jake shouldn't have to feel this way. And we already do. We can handle it. God, it's fucked up, but we're the ones who can carry this weight._

_He's innocent, in a way,_ said Abi, turning toward the smell of Jake in the dark crate. _Innocent of… this. How it feels._ From Abi, I felt the sensation of a hoof grinding into a lioness' tender ribs. _And he should be. I want him to be._

_He won't let us. There's no way he's going to change his mind, not now._

_Then we don't ask permission._ Abi licked my palm. _We ask forgiveness._

_I don't think anyone can forgive us for this._

Somewhere in the darkness, I heard someone crying, very softly. Abi swiveled his ears toward the sound and sniffed. It was Cassie. I scooted over and took her hand. I didn't say a word. If David was out there somewhere, any noise could give us away. But I held her hand. 

_Why aren't we crying, Abi?_ I wondered distantly. The idea of crying seemed as distant as walking on the moon. It was something people did, but they were blocky and glassy-faced and very far away, and they didn't look much like people at all when they did it. 

_I don't know, Rachel. I don't know._

My brain couldn't stay in one place. I thought about David circling the warehouse in owl morph, looking for some sign of a trap. I thought about him in dog morph, and what would have happened if he'd decided to tear Jordan's throat out. I thought about Cassie, idealistic Cassie whose hand I held in mine, and how Ax had recited to me her instructions on how to kill a child in cold blood. 

«Tobias. Morph to fly, follow my voice to this tree, and demorph in the foliage. You will not be seen. Everyone else, commence your morphs.» 

Adrenaline swamped my body so fast my head spun. I gave Cassie's hand one final squeeze, then let go. I tightened both my hands in Abineng's fur and focused on my morph. 

My face was the first to change, expanding outward like a balloon. It filled my vision until my eyes finally split, migrating to opposite sides of my head. My skin became thick and gray. Abineng disappeared from beneath my hands, making me fall forward. My vision became dimmer while my hearing and smell became sharper. My arms and legs shrank while my torso swelled up like a rotting fruit. My arms and legs consumed my hands and feet, leaving only my nails exposed, which thickened into tough stubs. Enormous thick teeth burst out of my jaws, filling my mouth. 

I was squat, tubby, and kind of cute. I was a pygmy hippopotamus, about a third the size of its bigger cousin. 

The mind bubbled up beneath mine. Water! It wanted to know where the water was. Then it could establish its territory, keep its rubbery skin wet, find water-weed to eat. It couldn't smell the familiar muddiness of water. 

Confined space with other animals the same size. Were they a threat? There was no way to avoid them. Stand and fight. I opened my mouth and showed them my teeth. That would make them think twice. 

«Rachel, Jake, come on, there's no time,» said a voice. 

Oh. Right. The simplicity of the pygmy hippo's mind was a respite. Anything was better than the mix of fear, nerves, and churning nausea that was my own mind. But I didn't have a choice. I had to play my part. If our trap didn't work, David wouldn't fall for another. I fell into place next to Marco. He was adjusting the collar of his button-down shirt, smoothing down the front to get rid of any wrinkles. He looked like he was about to wriggle out of his skin. As far as he could call this stolen skin his own. 

«Now it's your turn to get a grip,» I told Marco. «Does Mike Finley fidget like that?» 

Marco let his hands fall to his sides. Then he reached out and rested his hand on my head. That was more like what he would do. Best to start acting now. I looked sidelong at Cassie and Jake. Already they looked natural. June Finley was a short blonde woman with watery blue eyes and a pinched face. Beside her, a striped hyena nuzzled her side in a soothing gesture. Jake, giving her comfort. 

Somewhere outside the crate, a light came on. Footsteps echoed through the abandoned warehouse, none of them human. I knew it was just the bare lightbulb Ax had hooked up, and the footsteps were Ax and Tobias coming to open the crate, but it was still eerie. The vast space of the warehouse made every noise fracture into echoes. 

A blade appeared in the space where one wall of the crate met another. The blade pulled outward. There was a creak and a groan of old wood, and the door to the crate opened. Tobias pulled his blade free of the wood and bared his teeth in a goblin grin. Ax – well, it was Ax, but not as I've ever seen him. He was in the posture he uses when he's just about to fight, his weight mostly on his hind legs and his tail poised, but there was an easy swagger to it. His stalk eyes were pointed toward us like daggers ready to be thrown. 

He looked like a smaller version of Visser Three, in short. It wasn't hard to press my ears back to my skull and look cowed when he bellowed in public thought-speak, «Step forward!» 

Marco stepped out of the crate, and I matched his step as best I could. FWAPP! Ax's tail blade hovered a centimeter from Marco's throat. An eyeblink later, Tobias' wrist blade was at Cassie's throat. Marco and Cassie flinched, then went very still. Jake let out a little whimper. I cowered, lowering my head but watching Ax's tail blade intently. 

«This visit is for negotiation purposes only, so the human bandit may see that you are alive and whole. You will speak nothing of the pool, the Empire, or Yeerks, or none of you will leave this building alive.» 

“Y-yes, Visser,” said Cassie. She swallowed and licked her lips, never looking away from Tobias' wrist blade. Sweat beaded along her hairline. 

“We – we understand, Visser,” Marco said in a hoarse whisper. 

«Your spawn will not save you, you pathetic little primitives. My guard and I will be waiting outside this facility. Anything besides the human bandit that comes outside will be destroyed. When Ipsel 927 and Trafit 881 are back in your heads, they will instantly know any plots to escape you devise with your bandit son. They are under instructions to make your miserable lives even more so if they see any such schemes in your memories. Am I clear?» 

“Yes, Visser, very clear,” said Marco. Cassie just nodded as much as she could without cutting open her throat on Tobias' blade. 

Ax narrowed his main eyes at Marco and his stalk eyes at me. Damn, but he was good at this. I barely had to fake my shiver of fear. Tobias bared his teeth. Jake cringed. 

Abruptly, Ax and Tobias took their blades away and swaggered back toward the front entrance to the warehouse. Marco let out a long shaky breath and gripped my head just behind my ears. 

“Soon,” Cassie said in a thready voice. “Any minute now. He'll be here, finally.” 

I knew what Cassie was saying. She was reminding us not to break character when David showed up. But if David were somewhere listening, he would read another meaning entirely into her words. 

“June,” said Marco. His borrowed voice was deep, with a tremor in it. “What do we say?” 

“The words any lost little boy ought to hear,” Cassie said. “And that our David needs to hear most of all. We tell him everything's going to be all right.” 

We all fell silent. Marco let go of me and clasped Cassie's shoulder for a moment, then rubbed my head between the ears in slow circles with his thumb. I felt sick. No, I felt like a disease. A disease without a cure, that made people rot from the inside. 

«Show me their Yeerks!» came David's thought-speak from somewhere outside. «I won't demorph until you show me.» 

«Very well, you insolent little child. Guard, show him the basin!» 

«What is Tobias showing him?» I asked Cassie. 

«Two banana slugs in a covered bowl of muddy water. David's never really seen a Yeerk, just that mini-pool full of them, and he's never lived on the West Coast before, so he's definitely never seen a banana slug.» 

Banana slugs are ten inches long and super weird and gross-looking. If he'd never seen one before, he definitely wouldn't think they were from this planet. 

“They're in there?” I heard David say, faintly. 

«Alive and unharmed, as agreed. They have been instructed to tell you nothing of our secrets, so do not insult my intelligence by trying to extract information from them. I react swiftly and unmercifully to insults.» I imagined Ax making some threatening gesture to accompany his words. 

“Fine. Fine. I just want to see them, OK? I'm going in.” 

I didn't see David as more than a silhouette when he came in, the faint shape of Kirianor in pit bull form beside him. But I could smell him. My ears stood up and flicked forward. I took a step in his direction. Marco's grip tightened on my head, almost to the point of pain. 

“David,” Cassie breathed. “Oh, my David.” 

“Mom? Dad?” David said, nervously. He was close enough now that I could see him. His morphing outfit was clean and new, but he smelled stale and sour with sweat, and there were deep circles under his eyes. “Are you OK? Is it – is it really you?” 

“David, you're here,” Marco said. “I thought – I thought they might – but you're not. Oh, thank God.” I heard him breathe a sigh of desperate relief into his hands, cupped in front of his face. 

I took another step toward Kirianor. She was watching me with dark liquid eyes. I watched her back. 

“Come here, baby,” Cassie said, her voice choked with tears. She held out her arms. 

David's face crumpled. His lips trembled. Even through my dim vision, I could see that he didn't look like the hunter, the stalker, the would-be killer he'd become. He looked like a young boy who just wanted his life back. 

With a choked sob, he ran into what he thought were his mother's arms. 

Cassie clutched him fiercely to her chest. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head and wet his hair with her tears. Marco moved in and put a hand on David's back, rubbing soothing circles there and murmuring nonsense into his ear. I had always known Cassie was a good actress, but in that moment, Marco amazed me. He had put on his mask so firmly that he was able to give comfort to his rapist as if he were his lost and beloved son. 

Kirianor gave a tiny, doggy whimper. In that moment, I didn't need to fake a thing. She looked like an animal in pain. Abi and I were about to end her life. The least we could do was to end it kindly. It was more than we've ever given anyone or anything else we've killed. We rushed forward and closed the distance between us. 

I let Abi take the reins. He knows more about giving comfort as a dæmon does. He tucked his head over Kirianor's, letting her lick him and nuzzle against his neck. He nudged her nose with his, locking gazes. I stared into her eyes. They shone with joy and a child's love. 

Abi pressed his head against Kirianor's neck. That was when we reached for the mind slumbering beneath our own. _This is an enemy,_ I told the hippo. _Kill it._

The animal mind knew what to do. The hippo's jaws opened wide. It bore down with razor sharp teeth, each longer and thicker than a man's thumb. Something in Kirianor's neck crunched horribly. Then she dissolved into nothing but dust in my mouth, golden and insubstantial. Somewhere, distant, a final breath rattled from David's lungs. 

That was all it had taken to end a human life. The easiest kill I'd ever made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here](http://www.konicaminolta.com/kids/endangered_animals/library/field/img/p-hippopotamus_img01-l.jpg) is a pygmy hippopotamus. And [here](http://www.corbisimages.com/images/Corbis-AB007203.jpg?size=67&uid=9c4eb3bc-492a-4267-9d35-b2ad9d6c152f) are a pygmy hippopotamus' teeth. ([This](http://www.predatorconservation.com/images/carnivores/stripedhyena1.jpg) is the form Jake took.)


	4. The Lion Sleeps Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hush, my darling,  
> Don't fear, my darling,  
> The lion sleeps tonight.
> 
> – “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by the Tokens, adapted from the original song “Mbube” by Solomon Linda

**Jake**

There was no blood on her mouth. That was part of what made it so terrible. There was no evidence of what she'd just done. 

«Why?» I said. 

«Because you have enough on your conscience,» she said. «I wanted to spare you.»

«That's not your job.» I was shouting, I realized. I didn't care. «You didn't have to!»

«No. It was my choice. Jake,» she said, sounding lost. «I just wanted to protect you.»

I ran toward her, touching our heads together. I began to demorph. She followed my lead. As soon as I grew arms, I embraced her. Her flesh shifted grotesquely under my arms. I held on. Merl and Abi appeared beside us, an ibex pressed against an antelope's side. I felt a tight grip on my shoulders. Rachel had hands again. We were human. 

Only then did I hear the desperate sobbing. 

Rachel and I turned as a unit toward the sound, still holding on to each other's shoulders. Cassie had fallen to her knees, still holding David in her arms. Marco stood beside her, staring down at his pale face, his mouth still upturned with the smile of a boy reunited with his parents. I knew why Cassie was crying. Of course I did. This had all been her idea, and now she was holding the boy whose murder she'd so carefully planned. But in their morphs, Cassie and Marco didn't look like murderers shell-shocked by what they'd just done. They looked like parents mourning their dead child. Their lack of dæmons added something ghoulish to the sight, broken things mourning a dead thing.

“Cassie,” I said. “Let him go.”

Cassie just sobbed harder.

“Cassie, you have to let him go,” I said. Merl moved toward her slowly.

She clutched him tighter, rocking back and forth.

“Cassie,” Merl screamed, her voice echoing through the abandoned warehouse, “we have to do something about the body!”

Cassie let the corpse tumble to the ground. It splayed out grotesquely, its limbs twisting in a way no living body would. She curled in on herself as if she'd been struck a mighty blow. Marco leaned against a wall of the crate and vomited bile. After a few more dry heaves, he demorphed. The clothes he'd found became loose on him, the sleeves trailing past his hands. He looked like a kid playing dress-up in his dad's clothing.

Rachel and I exchanged a look. I wanted to be there for Cassie, but Marco needed me. Rachel could comfort her in my place, maybe even better than I could. I nodded toward Cassie, signaling her to go. “Get her away from the body,” Merl whispered to Abi.

I went over to Marco. Dia was a boa constrictor wrapped around him under his too-large clothing. I clasped his biceps, where I saw no outline of Dia's body through his shirt. “Come on, man,” I said, tugging him away from the acrid, stinking puddle on the ground. “Come on. We're not done yet.”

“Jake,” said Marco, his voice rasping horribly. He didn't resist my pull, but he didn't cooperate either. “I wanted to kill him. I wanted it so badly, after he – what he did. But now that he's dead, I don't think – I didn't really want to kill him.”

“None of us did,” I said. 

I saw Marco's eyes flick to Rachel, who was sitting on the floor next to Cassie, herself again, clutching her friend's head to her shoulder. Quincy, bat-formed, was on Abi's head, covering his eyes with his spread wings. Tears were running silently down Rachel's face. Despite everything, I was pathetically grateful that Rachel had killed David in my place. Not only could she hold herself together, but she had enough in her to be there for Cassie too. She was stronger than me. 

“ _None_ of us did,” I repeated. 

Ax and Tobias came in. Tobias was demorphed, perched on Ax's back. I couldn't read any particular expression on their faces in the light of the single bare bulb hanging from a ceiling beam. But Ax and Tobias are private people, and Andalites and hawks are hard to read. The fact that Tobias was perched on Ax's back, talons twined in his fur, said a lot by itself.

«Prince Jake?» Ax's thought-voice was soft, subdued. «How shall we dispose of the corpse?»

_Dispose of the corpse._ The words made it sound so impersonal, like we were cleaning up an inconvenient mess, not covering up a murder. It wasn't part of Cassie's plan, or if it had been, she hadn't told us. I stared at the body. I could morph tiger and drag the body to the woods, but we were too far from the woods. Someone was bound to notice. We could morph moles and dig a grave, but someone would notice the upturned soil. I could ask Ax to chop the body into pieces so we could each carry pieces away in raptor morph, but there would be blood, so much blood that the thought of it made me dizzy.

“We could just leave it here,” I said, finally. “It's not like we've left any of our own fingerprints.”

«Just leave it here to rot until someone finds it? That doesn't seem right,» Tobias said.

“Nothing about this is right,” I said.

I was surprised to hear Cassie speak. Her voice was harsh with sobbing, but evidently she'd heard our exchange. “There might be another way.”

“What?” I said.

“I'll call Aftran. She already knows.” Cassie hiccuped and wiped tears away with the back of her hand, clutching Rachel's shoulders with her other arm. “She could use Delia's holograms to hide him. She has a dog parkland in her basement just like the Kings. She could bury him there. No human or Yeerk would ever find him, not with Chee protection.”

“Do you think Delia would agree to this?” I said. “Because I don't think Erek would. He'd be too horrified by – by what we've done.” My voice cracked on the last word.

“It's not in violation of her programming. She wouldn't be doing violence, just... well, cleaning up after it.” She swallowed hard. “She might not. But she definitely won't turn us in to the police.”

The police. For some reason, I'd never even thought of that. If anyone found out what we'd done, we'd be arrested. We'd go to jail for who knew how long. Until, of course, the Yeerks took over and enslaved or killed everyone in jail.

«There's a pay phone three blocks south of here,» Tobias said. 

“Anyone have a quarter?” Cassie said.

Horribly, I wanted to laugh. Here we were, figuring out how to get rid of a dead body, and Cassie didn't have a quarter for the pay phone.

“Yeah,” said Marco, reaching into the pocket of his too-large pants. “I brought one just in case.”

_Just in case what?_ Merlyse wondered. _That doesn't even makes sense._

_Nothing makes sense,_ I thought, still wanting to giggle in sheer desperation. 

Cassie took the quarter. Rachel said, “I can come with you.”

“I'd rather talk to Aftran alone,” Cassie said. I didn't protest. We were in a bad neighborhood, but it wasn't like Cassie couldn't defend herself. 

As Cassie left, I realized I was staring at the body, and that I'd sat down, hard. Merlyse was a sand fox in my arms. I couldn't look away from David. He looked like a discarded doll, like you see in the bins at Goodwill. 

_It's not like we haven't killed anyone before,_ Merlyse thought. _I'm sure we've killed human-Controllers before. We kill Hork-Bajir all the time, and they're people too. So why is this different?_

_Because we planned this out, step by step. Because we looked him in the eye and pretended to love him as we killed him. Because he was just a kid. Because he was just like us, forced into a war he didn't have any choice not to fight._

_But Jake,_ said Merlyse, _what if everyone we kill is just like us?_

I thought about the story Tobias told us about Dak Hamee and the Hork-Bajir, how they'd fought for their freedom and lost. They really were like us. But when we killed them, we wrote it off as a casualty of war. How could I feel so awful about killing someone who clearly wanted to harm and kill us, but feel not much worse than usual about killing innocent Hork-Bajir who were forced to kill by the Yeerks in their heads? I wanted to tell myself that Cassie felt bad about killing Hork-Bajir, that she had it right, but I knew it wasn't true. 

I was making myself sick. What kind of person was I, who mourned killing sociopaths more than killing innocents?

«The blame does not lie with you alone, Prince Jake,» said Ax. I tightened my grip on Merlyse and didn't turn around. «You took on responsibility for him when you made him an Animorph, true. But the responsibility for his actions ultimately rests on his tail. He was given a great gift and a great opportunity: freedom, and a chance to fight for his parents' freedom. He chose to use that gift to his own advantage, and to cause suffering and death. He dishonored himself and his family, when he chose not to fight for them.»

“It's not that simple,” I said. But at the same time, I could see what Ax was saying. I was taking this so hard because I felt that things should have gone differently with David. Could have gone differently, if I'd made the right choices. But instead he had ended like this, as a broken doll in an abandoned warehouse. And we, who had chosen to save him from a life of slavery, had made it happen.

I sat there staring into nothingness for a while. I couldn't tell you what everyone else was doing. Probably the same thing. More than anything, I wanted to go home and sleep, but I wasn't naïve enough to think that sleep would ever come.

Some immeasurable time later, Cassie came back. “Everybody go home,” she said.

“What?” Rachel murmured. She sounded very far away.

“Go home. Aftran only wants to deal with me. I came up with this plan. Clean-up is my responsibility.” There was a horrible, harsh laugh to the word 'clean-up.' “I'll call you if anything goes wrong. Go home.”

I looked into Cassie's eyes. They were distant, stony, but determined. I began morphing owl _._ The others followed suit.

As the warehouse grew vast around me, I saw Ax raise his tail and strike the single bare lightbulb he'd wired up and hung from the warehouse ceiling beams. The light went out, and glass shattered across the floor. Just another broken thing in the ruin of the warehouse.

I followed Marco into the dark. It was only when the others had flown their separate ways that Marco noticed I was staying with him. I hadn't been able to protect him from David, but I could do this much. I could fly him home.

«What are you doing, man?» he said. «You should go home.»

«Marco,» I said. «I think you need a friend tonight. So let me be one.»

«I can make it back on my own.»

«I know you _can_. But that doesn't mean you _should_.»

«Fine. If it makes you feel better,» said Marco, and I knew that I had won. He was never going to admit how wrecked he really was. He doesn't like to be a victim. But at least he could accept my support when I offered it.

The only light on in Marco's house was a faint one coming from his dad's bedroom. He was awake, but he wouldn't notice the sound of a bird landing on carpet. Marco flew in through the open window and demorphed. I wasn't going to demorph myself, but then I saw that Dia, wrapped around his leg as a coral snake, had uncoiled herself enough for her head to point toward me. I hadn't seen her anything less than glued to Marco since the rape. Even if they couldn't ask for it aloud, they needed human contact.

I demorphed. As soon as Merl materialized as a sand fox, she touched her nose to Dia's. 

“So,” Merl whispered. “We did it. We saved the world.” 

“And we got rid of _him_ ,” said Dia. She tried to sound fiercely satisfied, but instead it came off hollow. After all, we'd killed Kirianor by doing nearly the same thing David had done to Dia.

We'd killed David, all right. But I didn't think Marco and Dia were rid of him yet. 

“You can call me whenever,” I said quietly, “if you want to hang out.”

“You don't even need to say it, man,” Marco whispered back. “I've always known that.”

I can never quite believe it when Marco speaks to me like that. Like I'm the best friend he could possibly have. Like I'm actually a leader worth believing in. But I treasure that loyalty, even if I don't deserve it.

I morphed back to owl and flew home, and to whatever dreams might await me.

**Cassie**

****

I didn't have to wait long for Delia to arrive; she had a car and there wasn't much traffic this time of night, especially not in this neighborhood. Still, every second stretched into uneasy hours as I perched on a scraggly tree in owl morph and kept watch. It wasn't likely that someone would just happen across this particular warehouse and find David's body, but if it did, I had to be ready.

No one came, though, leaving me alone with my thoughts. It had worked. The plan had worked. What did that say about me? What made me so good at planning a murder? And what made me so good at hiding my poison behind a mask, whispering sweetness into David's ear as I held him in my arms, my instrument of murder well-concealed?

_Rachel isn't an instrument of murder,_ said Quincy. _She's a person who made a terrible choice, just like us. And don't say it was easier for her. It wasn't. I can't believe otherwise. It wasn't._

I didn't notice the car pull up, but my sharp owl ears heard a voice whisper: “I'm here, Cassie.”

I steeled myself. On the phone, I'd told Aftran to explain everything to Delia, and evidently Delia had agreed to help. But I wasn't ready for her scrutiny or her judgment. _How terrible it must be,_ I thought, _for a pacifist to come to the aid of someone who just murdered a child._

That “someone who just murdered a child” didn't feel like me. It felt like somebody else on my team whose tracks I was here to cover. But it wasn't anybody else. Even Ax, Tobias, Marco, and Jake, who hadn't planned this out or dealt the killing blow, couldn't pretend they weren't responsible. We were all a part of this, and me perhaps most of all.

«I'm outside the warehouse in owl morph. I'll meet you inside,» I said. I swooped in through the broken frame of a window and perched on the edge of the crate where we'd hidden ourselves. My owl eyes cut through the darkness, seeing the spray of shattered glass on the floor and the horrible pale shape of David's body. 

I didn't see Delia come in, but I did hear a voice softly say, “Oh.” It occurred to me that despite the Chee's long lives, they probably don't see death very often. They keep away from scenes of violence and murder by nature. I wondered when was the last time Delia had seen a murdered child. “Aftran said you had to do this,” Delia said, her voice flat. “She believes you.”

«Maybe there was another way.» I answered her unspoken question with a trembling voice. «But if there was, I couldn't see it. If there was, I'll be the first in line to damn myself.»

“I'm not sure I believe you,” Delia said. “But I still think you are Earth's best hope to defeat the Yeerks. So I'll help you. The car is parked on the street right in front of the main entrance to the warehouse. Get inside and demorph.”

I wanted to help – it was my responsibility, after all – but I didn't argue with Delia, for fear she'd change her mind. I landed on the curb just a stretch of weeds away from the warehouse entrance and hopped forward on my talons. I found something hard just below neck-level: the bottom of Delia's car, its door left open. Of course, with the hologram, there was no danger of anyone trying to steal it. I hopped up. Inside the hologram, I could see the interior of the car. I demorphed, wedged between front seats and the back, until I pulled myself up into a seat and closed the car door.

I heard a clunk as Delia opened the trunk of the car, then a thump. I shuddered, imagining the body landing limply in the trunk like a sack of meat. The shudder turned into an uncontrollable shiver that wracked my whole body. I curled into a fetal ball, my teeth chattering. I heard Quincy's bat wings rustle as he shivered too. I felt like I might pass out. 

Delia opened the front door of the car and got in. Inside the hologram covering the car, her chrome body was bare. She'd left the key in the ignition. She closed her metal fingers around the key, turning it. The engine started and rumbled beneath me. I imagined David's body quivering with the vibrations from the engine. 

_We're in a car driven by a robot with the boy we just murdered in the trunk,_ Quincy thought hysterically. I closed my eyes and cupped him in my hands, pressing him to my chest, my body curled inward around him. I didn't bother with a seatbelt, though normally I would never ride without one. I didn't care. Even if the car crashed, I could just morph and fly away from the wreck. It took more than a car accident to kill an Animorph. I knew exactly how much more than a car accident it took to kill an Animorph.

While time had passed interminably slowly while waiting for Delia, the ride to her house compressed into almost no time at all. The car stopped moving, the engine turned off, and a voice said, “Come out, Cassie.” It took me half a minute to even recognize the words as English. I slowly uncurled from the fetal position, put Quincy on my shoulder, and opened the car door. 

I couldn't see Delia, and looking down I found I couldn't see myself either. So I just walked to the front door, and when I reached for the doorknob to open it, my hand went straight through. Delia had already opened the door and replaced it with a hologram. 

I stepped through. From inside the hologram, I could see the open door, so I reached out and closed it. When I turned around, I could see Delia all in stark chrome, David's body on her shoulder in a gruesome fireman's carry. My vision swam, and I had to swallow hard to fight back nausea. I felt as if his body were filling the corridor with a graveyard stench, even though it was fresh and couldn't be giving off any smell. 

Delia walked toward a door next to her kitchen that in any other house would have led to a cellar. In her house, it opened into an elevator that brought us down into a doggy parkland, just like the Kings had under their home. But unlike the other times I'd been to Delia's underground dog park, we didn't get swarmed by slobbery tongues and wagging tails. I might not be able to actually smell David's body, but the dogs could, and they kept their distance. I was glad. I wouldn't have been able to handle the dogs' uncomplicated joy.

She walked out into the park in what seemed to me a random direction. She found a spot in the shade of a tall tree and laid David's body down. I tried not to focus on the way his limbs and neck bent at horrible angles.

I swallowed, wetting my throat enough to form words. “Do you need help?”

“I can bury him myself,” said Delia. “But if Quincy turns into something that can dig, it'll go faster.”

“I'd like to,” said Quincy, “but I can't.”

“What do you mean?” Then Delia said, “Oh.”

“No,” I said. I scooped Quincy off my shoulder and held him in my hands. “Quincy, you can't mean that.”

“I mean it and you know it. You just haven't been paying attention. I've been taking this form almost all the time and you don't want to face it.” He curled his lips back, revealing fangs. “Here it is. I'm a vampire bat. I don't know what it means, or if we even want to know, but it's the truth.”

“A thing that flies out at night to suck blood? That's who I am?” I didn't want to have this conversation in front of Delia, but it was all spilling out of me.

“Something wrong with being a parasite, Cassie?” It was Aftran speaking, not Delia, quietly and with a bite of bitter irony. “Did you want to be something noble? A predator, maybe?”

“There's nothing wrong with being a parasite,” I said automatically. “They're just doing what they have to, to stay alive.”

“Except when it's you who's the parasite,” said Aftran. “Then it's twisted. Wrong.”

“Of course it's twisted and wrong!” I shouted. “I just murdered a boy and now I'm settled! I've turned into a monster and this is proof!” I held up my hands and brandished Quincy at her.

“I'm afraid,” said Quincy, not looking at Aftran. “This is what I am, but I'm afraid of what it means. I'm sorry.”

“Cassie,” said Aftran. “He's been taking this form most of the time for as long as I've known you. This is from before David.”

“It's been in me all along? Is that what you're saying? This... whatever this is?”

“Yes,” said Aftran. “I've been in your head. You've always been able to read people, to know what they want. And you've always used that ability, one way or another. You've used it to encourage the others and find their strengths, and to support them when they're weak. And you've used it to your enemies' undoing. But you've used the morphing power that way, too.”

“This wasn't war, Aftran,” I said, looking at David's body. “This was murder.”

“And what would have happened if you weren't who you are? Would the others have been able to stop him? Maybe. Or maybe David would have killed them, or worse than killed them. And if you weren't this way, you would use some other aspect of yourself as a weapon. That's what happens.” Aftran fixed her blank chrome gaze on me. “Go home, Cassie. You're in no state to help. We'll bury him and leave a marker. Call me when you're ready to see me again.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to argue with Aftran, with Delia, with my own dæmon, with the universe for putting me in a trap where murder was the only way out that I could see. But no one wanted to listen. So I went up in the elevator, walked to the second floor of Delia's house, opened a window, and flew out into the night. It was a relief to be in owl form. I didn't have to look at Quincy and wonder what his form said about me. He didn't have to look at himself and wonder. 

I flew in and landed behind the barn to demorph. I went inside and finished my chores for the day, throwing myself into the mindless routine of cleaning cages and changing bandages on injured animals. I cooed to the wounded animals as they cried out and struggled in pain at the change of bandages, even though I felt like crying out in pain myself. 

When I went inside, the house was dark. My parents were asleep, or reading quietly in bed. I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, and changed into pajamas. It was only when I was already in bed that I realized I'd never turned the lights on in my room or the bathroom. Quincy's echolocation had guided me through my nighttime routine. 

_I did that last night too,_ Quincy said.

_I didn't notice._

_There's a lot of things you haven't noticed. Go to sleep now. The sooner this day is over, the better._

_The sooner we sleep, the sooner the nightmares come._

_Could they be any worse than what actually happened?_

I couldn't argue with him on that. Anyway, the nightmares were only what I deserved. If I were able to sleep soundly, that would have me far more worried. I drifted into sleep, the moonlight blurring into the harsh light of a bare bulb shining in an empty warehouse. 

I woke to the bray of my alarm. My sheets were clammy with sweat. I had had a nightmare about my mother holding me and stroking my hair while Quincy buried his fangs in David's neck, sucking him dry. I couldn't bear the thought of going to school. I had to go to school.

By the time I got downstairs for breakfast, my dad was already in the barn starting the day's work. My mom was spreading jam on her toast. I muttered good morning, going through the motions of sticking bread in the toaster and eating a nectarine while waiting for my toast.

“Cassie, honey,” my mom said as I sat down with toast and a glass of milk. “I think we need to have a talk this afternoon.”

I froze. “A talk? About what?”

“You're not in trouble. Your father and I are just a little worried about you.”

_Have they noticed?_ Quincy wondered. He wasn't sure what it was they might have noticed, but it had to be something.

“I'm fine, Mom. I've just been busy lately,” I said, buttering my toast. Even as I said it, I knew it had to sound like a lie. After the night I'd had, I looked terrible. The bathroom mirror had revealed an ashen tinge to my face that the shower couldn't wash away.

“We'll talk later,” Dashiell said, his little rodent eyes fixed on Quincy.

I finished my breakfast and tried not to think about anything. My mom dropped me off at school on the way to the Gardens. I went to my locker and got out my binder for first period trigonometry. On the way to homeroom, I passed Rachel's locker. Abineng was in his huge sable antelope form, turning the traffic through the corridor into mayhem.

In the middle of the chaos, Quincy flew over to Abineng, landed on his head, and said in his ear, “You too, then?”

Abineng was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Yeah. Me too.”

“Is there something wrong with us?” said Quincy. “I mean, I feel like there must be, settling after… that.”

“If there is something wrong with us,” said Abineng, “then it went wrong well before all of this. Maybe ever since the construction site.”

“What will everyone think, when they find out?”

“They'll say all kinds of stupid things. You know how people are.”

“No, I don't mean _everyone_ ,” said Quincy, gesturing at the crowded corridor with a wing. “I mean the others.”

“It still doesn't matter,” said Abi, a sudden ferocity in his tone. “They don't decide what this means. That's for us to figure out for ourselves. Rachel and I have already started on that. So don't wonder what they think. You know yourself better than anyone.”

“There's too much to think about. Too much. I can't do it now, with… what just happened.”

“There's always something terrible happening. Sure, this is worse than most, but you never know what'll come next. If you don't figure it out now, then when?”

I had finally gotten past the press of people, and Quincy had to move on to keep up with me. But Abi's words lingered. I didn't really want to know what our settled form meant. But I couldn't run from myself forever.

**Marco**

****

I should have been happy he was dead. That's what I kept telling myself. After what he did to me, I should have been dancing on his grave. But that's not how I felt at all. ****

****

The last few days had been a blur of terror. I hadn't really had time since the night David attacked me for it to really sink in. All I could think about was how we were going to save the world leaders from infestation and stop David from murdering us all or selling us out to Visser Three. But now that he was dead, it was all I could think about. ****

****

When Jake left me and I finally went to bed, I didn't dream about the murder. I dreamed about his hands. Not the single hand he'd wrapped around Dia's throat, but hands everywhere, more than any human being could have, stroking Dia from head to tail tip, thrusting fingers into her mouth, tightening in my hair, pinning me to the ground, reaching into my chest and caressing my internal organs one by one. ****

****

It's a good thing I sleep on my stomach. My pillow muffled the sound of my screams. ****

****

I woke up an hour before my alarm. I couldn't tell you what I did or what I thought about for that hour. I just lay there, Dia wrapped so tightly around me I could barely breathe, staring at the ceiling until my alarm finally went off. The sound of it was so jarring and sudden that I nearly fell off my bed in terror. 

I took a shower, Dia still wrapped around me. Normally the shower woke me up in the morning, got me ready to face the day. But this morning I was both too tired and too awake. I was so bleary-eyed that I nearly poured myself a bowl of my dad's nasty shredded wheat cereal instead of my Cocoa Puffs, but when Dad dropped his spoon on the floor with a loud clatter, I was so startled I practically jumped out of my skin.

“Take it easy,” Dad said. “Just my spoon.” 

“Right,” I said, settling back into my chair. “Sorry.”

“You seem stressed lately, Marco. What do you say we do something together this weekend?”

I blinked at him until the words penetrated my brain. My dad and I, doing something together. Well, it was probably better than anything else I would have done that weekend. “That sounds OK,” I said.

“You're sure? You don't have any plans? You always seem to be out somewhere.”

“I'm sure.” If Jake wanted me for anything, I'd tell him to shove off.

I walked to school and went to homeroom without seeing any of the others. It was better that way. Seeing how terrible they looked would have reminded me of how terrible I felt. I sat at the back of the class in homeroom as usual and waited for the crackle of the intercom.

“Good morning,” said the principal.

Everyone in class started whispering to each other. Usually one of the secretaries does the morning announcements. If the principal was doing them herself, there must be something important.

“I just spoke with Officer Quiñonez from the police department,” the principal said. “One of your classmates, ninth grader David Finley, has been reported missing. He was last seen on Friday last week.”

The whispers intensified. “Hey, Marco,” someone hissed. “Weren't you with him at lunch on Friday?” I ignored it all. I took a piece of paper out of my folder and started making a paper airplane. If everyone thought I was preparing for a prank, they'd stop asking questions.

“If you know anything that might help us find David,” the principal went on, “please talk to any of your teachers, me, or Mr. Chapman. I know some of you may be frightened. I understand. The school counselor will have her door open all day if you need support. Now, if you have sports practice this afternoon, please remember that all practices have been relocated to…”

I tuned out the rest of the announcements and sent my paper plane sailing across the room. It hit a sparrow dæmon who was flitting around, spreading gossip. He screeched and gave me a dirty look. I pasted a smug smile on my face. Meanwhile, my brain buzzed with half-formed thoughts. _Will Dad notice that – how long will they – will I ever be able to – why can't this be over?_

When announcements ended, everyone rushed out toward their lockers. I was about to join them when my homeroom teacher said, “Marco? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

I stopped in my tracks and tried not to look guilty. Then I realized it didn't matter. Even if I did look guilty, the teacher would assume it was because I'd played some prank and I was worried he'd give me detention. I'm Marco the Clown, after all.

“What's up?” I said, stepping up to the front of the classroom.

Mr. Kasdan looked at me over his spectacles, while his gecko dæmon flicked her tongue at me thoughtfully. “A few of us saw you hanging out with David last week.”

I hunched my shoulders. Dia retreated under my shirt so only her mottled python head showed from under my sleeve. “Yeah,” I said.

“Did he say anything to you? Anything out of the ordinary?”

An ugly laugh bubbled up in my chest. I fought it down and said, “No. Just normal stuff. We only just met.”

“No idea where he might be?”

_Nope, no idea,_ I thought. _You see, I'm not sure if I believe in hell._ “No. He just… talked. That's all.”

“All right,” said Mr. Kasdan. “I thought I might ask, just in case. And Marco? If you think you need to talk to the counselor, there's no shame in that. I know it must be strange, to know the boy you just met went missing. But remember, there are people you can talk to.”

“I'm fine,” I said. “It's just kind of weird, that's all.”

“OK. You can go on to class, then,” said the teacher. 

I finally got away. Honestly, all I wanted to do was open a window, morph osprey, and fly away. I walked down the corridor without really seeing anything of front of me, and almost ran headfirst into Abineng. He was blocking half the hallway with his huge antelope form. I drew myself short. Rachel met my eyes.

Suddenly, I was brought back to last night. To David in my arms, crying with joy. To the smile on his face as he breathed his last when Rachel's loving embrace turned deadly. He'd died happy, while Rachel and Abineng did to Kirianor something not so different from what David did to me. In that moment, I wanted to strangle Rachel. How could she do that to David and let him die happy, when David did it to me and I had to live like _this_?

_What? Would you rather he died suffering, knowing what Rachel was doing to him? If she'd done that, how would she be any different from David? And if that's what you would have wanted, then how are_ you _different from him?_ Dia said.

The wave of hot anger washed away, leaving me with only tired grayness inside. _Really,_ I thought, _I owe Rachel. We all do. I'm not sure any of us could have done what she did. I'm not sure I would have made it quick._

_It was more than he deserved,_ Dia said. _But it's not about him. It's about us. We're the survivors, after all._

My focus on the world around me returned. Rachel's expression was troubled. I wasn't sure if she was worried for me, or if she was just thinking about her own problems. 

_She's got plenty of problems. Why do you think Abineng hasn't changed out of that form?_ Dia pointed out. 

_Can you imagine settling after that? She must wonder if this is a special form for psychos and murderers._ I had the sudden impulse to tell Rachel that she wasn't a psycho. She may be a murderer, and I may joke about her being a psycho all the time, but she wasn't. Even after this, she wasn't. 

The bell rang. I walked around Abineng and went to class, and tried not think about how long the hours would be. 

**Rachel**

****

_They're safe,_ recited Abineng, a mantra all through breakfast as monkey-formed Zyanya struggled to tie Sara's shoes and Jordan complained about the brand of cereal Mom bought. _We did it. They're safe._

****

It was almost enough to keep me from hating myself. 

Caedhren watched Abi all morning. I think he's noticed that Abi doesn't change anymore, but he didn't say anything. I'm glad. Neither of us communicated in anything more sophisticated than grunts and mumbles. 

I didn't freeze up or act guilty during the announcement in homeroom. I didn't even feel guilty. I didn't feel anything at all. I wondered, distantly, what Officer Quiñonez would think if he knew David had been murdered by his classmates. By Rachel, the star student. 

I went to my locker and sorted through it for my history binder. Abi startled a little when someone nearly ran into him. I turned around to see Marco, looking like death warmed over. And for a second, just a second, there was something like hatred in his eyes.

It took Abi an instant to figure out why. _We killed David by getting to Kirianor. By violating him, like he did to Jordan. Almost like what he did to Marco._

For the first time since I'd walked through the front door of the school, I felt something. I felt everything all at once. Anger, at myself for not realizing how the murder would make Marco feel. Disgust, at how far we'd stooped to David's level. Horror, at the thought that David had died smiling in Marco and Cassie's arms, never knowing what I'd done to him. 

The bell rang, and I got my stuff for class. I couldn't be mad at Marco. I had no idea how it felt to be raped, so I couldn't judge him for how he reacted. If anything, I was mad at Cassie, for coming up with a plan that was both more kind than David deserved and more cruel than any of us could bear. But at the same time, I was grateful to Cassie, because what I might have done to David otherwise probably would have been even worse. 

I was awful in class that morning. In history class, we learned about the assassination of Lincoln. I wondered if John Wilkes Booth felt the way I did after he killed the president. 

_John Wilkes Booth seems like he was totally nuts,_ Abineng said.

In my head, I laughed bitterly.

I was looking forward to lunch, if only for the chance to zone out without being yelled at for it, until Chapman stopped me on the way to the cafeteria.

“I'd like to see you in my office, Rachel,” he said, beckoning to me. I broke out in a sweat. Had David managed to sell us out before he died?

_That doesn't even make sense,_ Abineng said. _If he'd sold us out to the real Visser Three, why would he fall for a fake one?_

It was a stupid thought, but the kind that's hard to avoid when you're an Animorph. “Um, OK,” I said.

Chapman raised an eyebrow as he led the way to his office. “No need to worry. You're not in trouble.” He opened the door to his office and gestured for Abi and me to go in first. I sat down in the chair across from his desk, while Abi stood behind me, his head lowered so it hovered over my shoulder.

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn't that the lanyard on Chapman's neck would open as soon as he sat in his chair. His dæmon, a brown ferocious-looking insect called a gladiator, fell neatly from the lanyard onto Chapman's desk. She said, “Abineng, I've noticed you've been taking this antelope form of yours exclusively.”

“Yeah?” said Abi, guardedly.

“Do you have something to tell me?” said the gladiator.

Abi and I looked at each other. We had both known this day would come. We couldn't walk around the school like this forever. But we hadn't thought it would come so soon, or from Chapman of all people. 

“OK. Yeah,” Abi said. “I guess it's time to move downstairs.”

“You make it sound like a prison sentence,” Chapman's dæmon said. “First off, let me offer my congratulations. Settling is a major milestone in life. Second, our students who take classes on the basement floor are no different from any of the other students. The teachers are the same – some of our staff take one period of the day downstairs. You can take electives, as long as you use the elevator to get to class instead of the hallways and stairs. You can even eat with your friends in the cafeteria – your lunch period will be timed to start five minutes before everyone else, so you can move comfortably through the cafeteria and sit at a table by the elevator before the crowd comes in.”

I knew all of that. I'd seen the kids with big dæmons sitting at the tables by the elevator. But they seemed to form their own clique, because they spend all day together. I didn't want to spend my time with them. I wanted to be with Cassie and Melissa. But I guess they'd just come to me. They would do it for my sake. But what if Jake had some important news to pass on? He wouldn't be able to pass casually by my locker and let me know. This made life more complicated. “It's all right, I guess,” Abi said. “I can handle it.”

“You can go to your classes as normal today,” said Chapman. “Tomorrow morning before class, drop by the guidance counselor and get your new schedule. Then go to your new homeroom downstairs.”

“I'll do that,” I said. My mind wasn't really there. Now that I had thought of how taking classes downstairs would affect how Jake could let me know about meetings and missions, I thought of other problems Abineng's settled form would create. I needed to talk to him.

“I know this is a big transition in your life, Rachel,” Chapman said. “You can talk to the school counselor if you need support. Or you could come to the Sharing. We have workshops for young people who've just settled, to help figure out what it all means.”

I reached up and tightened my fingers in Abineng's dark fur. “I'm fine, Mr. Chapman. I like Abineng the way he is.” 

Abi looked at me fondly. I really was at peace with what his form meant. I'd read about it, I'd thought about it, and I'd figured out what it said about me. More than anything, I wished he could have settled at some other time. It might have actually been a joyful occasion, if I didn't think of attacking David in the schoolyard every time someone mentioned Abi settling. But that wasn't about the form itself. It was about becoming an adult in a time of war. Because I couldn't pretend I was really a child anymore.

“You can go ahead to lunch now. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns,” said Chapman.

I left the office and went to lunch. I was late because of Chapman, but that ended up being a good thing, because the line for food wasn't so crowded, and I knew Cassie would save me a seat at her table anyway. I sat down across from her, earning glares from the kids in the table behind me. I don't think it's physically possible for me to have cared less.

Cassie swallowed a mouthful of food. She looked up at me. There were deep circles under her eyes. “What kept you?”

“Chapman,” I said, stabbing broccoli with my fork. 

“Chapman? What happened?”

“Nothing to worry about. He's just sending me downstairs.”

“Downst – ” That was when Cassie looked, really looked, at Abineng. After a long pause, she said, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Abi. “It's called a sable antelope.”

Cassie put down her spoon and leaned toward me. “Us too.”

I looked at Quincy. He was a vampire bat. As he had been for a few weeks now. The form he'd started taking after they met Aftran. “I guess it's not surprising,” I found myself saying.

Cassie looked haunted. “What does that mean?”

“Cassie, look. The people we are now – we've been becoming those people for a long time. Since before…” I gestured vaguely. “All of this. But I guess something has to tip the scale. And whatever else you can say about us, you can't say we're kids anymore.”

“I couldn't sleep,” Cassie whispered. “After I came home from Delia's place. I worry there's something wrong with me, settling after… that. I'm still not sure I'll ever be able to look at Quincy without thinking about how he got to be the way he is.”

“If there's something wrong with Quincy, then the same thing's wrong with me too,” Abi said.

“I'm not saying there's something wrong with you,” said Quincy.

“Really? Because it sure sounded like it.”

Quincy flew over and landed on Abineng's head. He whispered, “I'm the one who came up with the plan. I'm the one who made this happen. You just did what I asked you to do.”

“No,” said Abi. “We're all responsible. We're all a part of this. I won't let you take all the blame. So face it: we're both screwed up. But that doesn't mean we were wrong to settle as we did.”

“I want to believe that. I really do,” said Quincy. Then, in the barest of whispers, he said, “I was thinking of visiting the grave Saturday morning. Do you want to come?”

I stared at Cassie, surprised. Then I realized: if Delia's basement was anything like the Kings', there would be plenty of room for a grave. 

_I don't want to see it,_ Abi thought.

_I think we have to,_ I thought back.

“OK,” I said. “I'll come.”

To stand over the grave of the boy we'd murdered.


	5. The Antelope and the Bat

**Rachel**

Instead of biking straight home after school, I decided to go out to Tobias' meadow. He saw me long before I saw him, of course. As I propped my bike up against a tree, he said, «Hey, Rachel.»

I looked around, but couldn't see him.

«Up here,» he said.

I turned toward the woods. Tobias was up in a tree just behind the treeline between meadow and forest. 

“Can you be human, Tobias? I want to talk.”

Tobias glided down from his branch and morphed human. His legs shot up into scaly stilts, then thickened. His fierce yellow eyes softened into hazel. The bones in his wings crunched as they changed direction and became more like arms. His spine straightened and lengthened. His feathers began to melt away, and his talons softened into feet. As he reached his human size, Elhariel appeared on his newly formed shoulder. His feathers ran together into skin, and his beak retracted into his face. The only sign left of the morph was the scaliness of his legs, and soon that faded too. 

“Let's walk,” I said, turning toward the forest. There wasn't a path, but the woods held no dangers for us.

I glanced sidelong at the blank mask of Tobias' face. Except for the expression, he looked just the same as he had the night we walked through the construction site. The rest of us had grown a little, got haircuts, maybe the traces of sleepless nights beneath our eyes. But Tobias wasn't human much, and he had been preserved through time. Elhariel, too, was the same shape she'd always been. But that was the nature of settling.

“What was it like when you settled?” Abi asked El.

El looked a little surprised. It wasn't the conversation she'd expected to have. “Well, I guess I liked bird forms for a long time. Tobias used to sit on a bench in the playground and I'd fly from the jungle gym to the seesaw and back. We always wanted to settle as a bird. Some people hope to be a bird end up as a beetle, but we got lucky. Or, I guess, Tobias was the right type of person. But I took this form one day, and we knew.”

“And what did you do? When you knew?” Abi said.

“We didn't tell anyone. People figured it out at school soon enough. Even Uncle Leo figured it out eventually.”

“That's not what I meant. What did you do for yourself?”

“Oh.” There was a hint of a smile in El's voice. “We went to the park. Tobias ran across the grass and I flew over his head, as high as I could. I settled as something with wings. I guess we wanted to celebrate that.”

“Let's do it,” Abi said. “Right now. Let's run across the meadow.”

Tobias laughed sheepishly. “I haven't run on two legs in ages. I'll probably fall flat on my face like Ax.”

“No you won't. You'll remember,” I said. “Let's go!” 

Abi took off toward the meadow. I had to run flat out to keep our bond from stretching to its limit – he was so much faster than me. When the trees opened out into the meadow, he slowed down deliberately. In the trees, he was fast. In the open grass, running wasn't even running anymore, for him. It was a state of being, no less natural than standing or sleeping. My hair came loose from its clips as I ran. I looked up, saw Elhariel above me, and knew Tobias wasn't far behind. 

Abi's mane streamed out behind him. His muscles flexed beneath his dark coat. I wanted to catch with him, but I knew he wouldn't let me. That was the point. His body was for running. Mine was for eating and writing. That was what they were shaped for.

Suddenly, Abi came to a halt and rolled on his back. I pounced and rubbed his pale belly with my hands. Abi squirmed and waved his hooves in the air wildly, making little chuffing noises in his throat. 

I rolled over on the grass, breathless, and saw Tobias sitting cross-legged with El tucked in his arms. Normally Tobias' face was blank and distant, but now there was an upward curl to the corner of his mouth. El hopped forward so she stood on the grass, tiny next to Abi's bulk. The pattern of her feathers was oddly similar to the markings on his coat.

“I like it,” she said.

Abi looked at her as if he had no idea what she meant. But I found myself smiling a little too.

Then it all came back to choke me. I had killed a boy yesterday, and here I was, smiling. What kind of person could do that?

_The kind of person who can go through something terrible and still be able to smile afterward,_ Abi said silently. _We're a murderer now, but that doesn't mean we didn't come out with some scars. That we didn't suffer._

“I don't want to be the kind of person who smiles after murdering people,” I said. It wasn't until I saw Tobias flinch that I realized I'd said it out loud.

“This isn't all on you, Rachel,” he said. “I was a part of it too. We all were.”

“Still.”

“I think you're brave,” said Tobias, “to still be able to smile.”

That embarrassed me, so I didn't try to respond. “What did you do today?”

“Ax and I talked some. He had a – a ritual he wanted to show me. Then I went to visit the Hork-Bajir.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You do that a lot, huh?”

Tobias hunched his shoulders. “Yeah, I do,” he said defensively. “They’re good company. Remember when Jara told us that story about Dak and Aldrea?”

“OK, yeah, that was pretty cool,” I said. I hadn't realized the Hork-Bajir were so important to him. But then again, he was the one who rescued them from death and worse. He was the one they regaled with stories from their history. Maybe it was nice to spend time around people who saw him as a hero, not a murderer. 

“I morphed Hork-Bajir,” Tobias said, “and Toby – Jara and Ket's daughter – gave me climbing lessons. The instincts are good enough for the basics, but the Hork-Bajir can do so much more with practice. She liked being able to teach me something, for a change.”

“That – does sound nice, actually.” I gave Tobias a considering look. I definitely didn't know he was teaching anything to the Hork-Bajir. There was a lot more to his life than any of us knew. I guess he had to do something with all of his free time besides hunt and spy on Controllers. I felt stupid, even guilty, for never thinking of that before. Was I so wrapped up in my own life that I didn't think of anyone else's?

_Speaking of other people's lives,_ said Abi, _isn't it time to tell Mom?_

I wriggled uncomfortably. I wanted to put off telling Mom and Dad and Jordan and Sara about settling. But they were bound to notice sooner or later, and it was probably better to come to them with it instead of the other way around. As far as they knew, I had nothing to be upset about.

“I should go,” I said. “I need to be with my family.”

“OK,” he said. 

On impulse, I reached out and took his hand. “Thanks, Tobias.” 

I walked back to my bike and headed home, Abi keeping pace beside me. I put the bike back in the garage. My mom was home. No excuses. It was time to face the music.

I kicked off my shoes when I came through the door. My mom was at the dining room table with some paperwork spread in front of her. Jordan was at the other end of the table with a textbook open under her elbow, eating a PB and J. In the living room, Sara was playing with a toy horse on the carpet while Zyanya clung to its back in mouse form. “Could you change into a bird or something before you come in?” Caedhren said to Abi. “Or at least wipe off your hooves first. You're getting dirt in the foyer.”

“Hello to you too, Mom,” I said. I propped the front door open so Abi could step out and wipe his hooves on the doormat.

“I'll keep it in mind,” Abi told Caedhren, sounding casual, “since I think I'll be sticking to the hooves.”

Caedhren flew from his perch on the back of Mom's chair to a lampshade near Abi's eye level. “What does that mean?”

By now, Sara had stopped playing with her horse to listen. Jordan was pretending to read her textbook, but shot covert glances my way.

“Probably just what you think it means,” Abi said quietly. 

Mom scooted her chair back from the table, stood up, and turned to face me. She looked – expectant. “Honey?”

I placed my hand at the base of Abi's neck. “Yeah, Mom. This is it.”

She rushed forward and folded me into a crushing hug. Caedhren flew in a joyful little circle around Abi.

“What's going on?” Sara demanded.

“Rachel settled, you stupid!” Jordan said.

“Oh my God, Abi!” Zyanya shrieked, turning into a wolf pup and running into his legs.

“My baby's all grown up,” Mom said tearfully into my shoulder.

My face went hot and my belly went queasy. My family thought this was a great day. Normally, I'd agree with them. I do like the way Abi is. But it was a terrible day. It was the first day of the rest of my life as a murderer.

Tseycal stalked his way over as a lynx. He said, “What are you?”

“A sable antelope,” said Abi. “It lives on the savanna in Africa.”

“Wow!” said Sara.

Mom pulled out of the hug, but kept a firm grip on my shoulders. “Sounds like you've done some research,” she said, beaming.

“Well, yeah,” I said, willing my nausea not to show. “We had to know what it was all about.”

“What does it _feel_ like?” said Zyanya, wide-eyed.

Abineng laughed weakly. “I mean, it's not like a bolt of lightning or a tingling feeling or anything. I just didn't feel like changing anymore. It's like when you find a really comfy position on the couch and you don't want to get up again.”

“That's silly,” Zya said. “All forms are comfy.”

“Now they all are,” said Caedhren, “but when you get older you'll find that some forms are comfier than others. And then you'll find the comfiest of all.”

“Come over here, Jordan,” said Mom. She moved toward her armchair. “Rachel, why don't you tell us all how it happened?”

I found a spot on the couch near the foyer, where Abi would have room to stand. _I should have thought of this before,_ Abi thought. _We can't tell them about how we really figured out I was settled._

Sara sat in front of me on the carpet, a worshipful expression on her face. It stung. I wasn't a good role model for Sara. But she didn't know that. 

_Tell them something close to the truth, so you won't slip up,_ Abi advised. That had worked for us before, when we had to lie about why we were so tired or where we went after school every day.

“There was this jerk bullying some other kids. Abi was like this, getting all tough – ” Abi settled into a caricature of the posture he'd taken in front of David, scuffing his hoof and tossing his head, an utter joke compared to how he'd really been. “And I told him to back off. He walked away, and I was about to go to the cafeteria and told Abi to be something smaller, so it'd be easier to walk down the hallway. He said – ”

“I don't want to,” Abi finished.

“So we talked about it a little,” I said, “and I guess that was it.”

“Did the bully stop?” Jordan said.

“Yeah,” I said, in a flat tone that I hoped would cut off any more questions.

“You're so brave,” Sara said. “I bet all the bullies are scared of you.”

“That's my Rachel,” Mom said fondly. “So what did you find out about sable antelopes?”

I summarized the research I did in terms that Jordan and Sara would understand. “Though I'd like to find out more,” I added. “Say, Mom, shouldn't I call Dad?”

“Oh, of course!” Mom said. “How could I have forgotten? Let me get the phone.” She took a wireless phone from its cradle and passed it to me. 

I dialed my dad's number. He picked it up after the second ring. He probably saw my name on the caller ID and rushed to get it. I felt a rush of affection for him. “Hi, Rachel,” he said. “How's my girl?”

“Pretty good, Dad,” I said, and I almost wasn't lying. It was more of a comfort to hear his voice than I would have imagined. “Actually, I have some big news.”

“What kind of news?” Excitement warmed my dad's voice.

“I've settled,” I said. “As a sable antelope.”

“Oh, Rachel, that's fantastic!” Dad said. “You'll have to tell me everything. I'll book a flight and we'll go out for dinner tomorrow.”

Suddenly, I was less excited. I pictured all of us going out to a restaurant, my parents heaping congratulations on me I didn't deserve. But then again, I'd get to see Dad. “Sounds great,” I said. “I'll pass the phone to Mom.”

Mom and Dad talked about where we'd meet for dinner. She passed the phone back to me. “I'm proud of you,” Dad said. “I can't wait to see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, and hung up.

“Dad's coming, Dad's coming!” Sara said, prancing around the living room, Zyanya clinging to her back as a little monkey.

“So why did you wait so long to tell us?” said Tseycal. “You've been a sable antelope for a few days now.”

“I wasn't ready,” Abi said. “I wanted to be sure. Like I said, you don't have a magic moment when you suddenly know.”

“I guess,” Tseycal said.

“I'm going to draw a picture of you, Abi!” Sara declared, running to her room for crayons and paper. 

I was getting a bit overwhelmed. I just wanted to be alone, away from all this joy I didn't want or deserve. “I should start on my homework,” I said.

“Go ahead, honey,” Mom said. “I'll make your favorite tonight. Pesto chicken.”

I kissed her on the cheek. “Can't wait.”

It wasn't just an excuse to get away. I really did need to catch up on my homework. It wasn't like I'd had the energy to do it, the last several days. Of course, it wasn't much easier now, when the image of David's limp body appeared whenever I closed my eyes. I opened my backpack and got out my English class binder, flipping to the poem I had to write about for tomorrow.

_Our Dæmons shuddered – feathers met –_

_As we Embraced at last –_

_And Found within each other's Wings_

_The many Years – that passed –_

_Since You and I last pressed our eyes_

_Upon each other's Souls –_

_And claimed – from Grasping hands of Time –_

_The Hours that he Stole –_

I pushed aside everything in my mind, and forced myself to think about metaphors.

**Cassie**

It was the worst day of my life.

Well, no. That's not quite true. That first terrible battle at the Yeerk pool was probably the worst. But I was so immersed in pain and regret that I could scarcely remember that night. There was no past or future. There was only the murder, and my part in it. In history class, we watched a video about the Lincoln assassination. When the video came to the re-enactment of that terrible moment on the balcony of the theater, I had to ask for a bathroom pass. I splashed water on my face, breathing hard, thinking of the actor who played Lincoln in the video sitting slumped in his seat, fake blood flowing from the bullet wound in his head, his dæmon dissolving in a burst of cheesy special effects. There hadn't been any blood, when David died. But he'd gone slack in my arms, just the same way, as Kirianor melted into golden _hrala_ that was all too real. 

I had to visit his grave, soon, for my own peace of mind. But I didn't want to do it alone. Aftran would be there, but she wasn't a part of it, not the way my friends were. 

“Ask Rachel,” Quincy said. 

I looked in the bathroom mirror and felt a dull wave of nausea at the sight of the vampire bat on my shoulder. It didn't feel like it belonged there – except it was Quincy, so it did. 

“You think she'll say yes?”

“I do.” Quincy stared at his reflection. “Cassie, this isn't going to change.”

He meant that his shape wasn't going to change, but he also meant more than that. He meant that this wasn't the hardest decision we'd ever have to make. It would never stop until we died or we won this war. 

I went back to class. We talked about why John Wilkes Booth and the other conspirators wanted Lincoln dead. It made it all so cut and dried, their motives. Nothing about what goes on inside your head when you make the decision to kill someone. Nothing about what it does to you, after. Just reasons. 

At lunch, Rachel revealed that Abi had settled. It didn't surprise me much. It was scary to think that the same terrible choice had cemented us into who we truly were. But it was also a relief, in a way. My best friend was going through this too. She felt the same doubts I did, even if she seemed to be dealing with them better than me. 

When I got home, I went straight to the barn to do my afternoon chores, only to find that they'd already been done. The charts showed that all the animals I was supposed to treat were up to date on their meds. I slung my schoolbag back on my shoulder and went in the house. I dropped it next to the front door with a thump when I realized that my parents were in the living room, waiting for me, just as my mother had warned me over breakfast. They each had a magazine, but as soon as I came in, Emeraude and Dashiell swiveled toward me and pinned me with expectant looks. 

“Hi, Dad,” I said nervously. “Hi, Mom. What's up?”

“Why don't you sit down,” Mom said, patting the cushion next to her on the couch, across from Dad's armchair. 

Fear flooded me, despite Mom’s reassurances in the morning that I wasn’t in trouble. Had they somehow found out that I was gone last night? Did they have questions about the missing boy?

I sat. Quincy dug the little claw-fingers on his wings into my shirt. 

“Relax, Cassie,” Dad said. “You're not in trouble. We just want to talk.”

I tried to make myself relax, but couldn't. “About what?”

Dashiell said gently, “We've noticed that you've been taking this vampire bat form a lot lately. In fact, you've been taking it almost exclusively. Do you have anything to say about that?”

My swirling thoughts stuttered to a halt. This wasn't about last night. It was a whole other nightmare. I didn't want my parents to know what I'd become. But I guess they would have had to find out sooner or later, and the time had come. What should I say? How could I make up for their inevitable disappointment?

“Sorry,” Quincy blurted.

Emeraude leaned her head in further through the window. “Sorry? For what?”

“For settling like this,” he said. “I didn't mean to.”

“Honey,” Dashiell said, “there's nothing to apologize for.”

“But vampire bats,” I said, “they suck blood, and spread disease among livestock, and – ”

“Quintavion. Why don't you spread out on the coffee table so we can have a look at you?” Dad said, indicating an empty spot on the coffee table between books of wildlife photography. 

On my shoulder, Quincy quivered.

Mom scooped up Dashiell and put him on the coffee table. “Bats are beautiful,” he said. “All those delicate bones in their wings. I just want to see.”

I scooped Quincy off my shoulder and put him on the table. He spread out his wings. The membranes stretched between his long bony fingers were translucent enough that I could faintly see the grain of the wood through them. Dashiell reached out a paw and touched the pale fur on Quincy's tiny legs. “It's common vampire bats that do most of the disease-spreading,” he said. “You're a hairy-legged vampire bat. They feed from birds only.”

I imagined Quincy burrowing between a bird's feathers, sinking his teeth into the pink skin between. 

Dad must have read my thoughts on my face. “Whatever you think about vampire bats, put it aside. People say all the time that pigs are dirty, but you and I know that's not true. Adolf Hitler's dæmon was a goshawk, but that doesn't make the bird itself worth any less respect. So put it all aside. Can you do that for me, Cassie?”

And of course he was right. I had said as much to David only a few days ago. Just because we tell ourselves grand stories about lions doesn't make them any more noble than moose. The reverse had to be true for vampire bats.

_I guess I'm just not ready to believe that I might be worth the benefit of the doubt,_ Quincy thought.

_And maybe we're not,_ I thought back, _but maybe we should listen to what they have to say and decide for ourselves._

“OK,” I said. “I'll try to have an open mind.”

“Good,” Mom said. “Actually, we wanted to celebrate your settling with a little ceremony, but you've been so moody lately we thought that maybe you were upset with the way you'd settled. So let's talk first, and we can do the ceremony later.”

I was curious. My parents aren't religious, so it wouldn't be a ceremony like that, but they are spiritual in their own way. If they had a ceremony in mind, it would be one they'd either made up themselves or had been passed on from family or friends. Something meaningful, something ours. I didn't want to spend that time staring into the middle distance and trying to feel elsewhere, but I also didn't see that I had much choice. 

“Not many people know this,” Dad said, “but vampire bats are the great altruists of the animal kingdom.”

“Altruists?” I'd gotten so used to kill-or-be-killed that I'd forgotten that kindness, too, was natural.

“Yes,” Mom said. “Not like ants, that are all sisters to each other and daughters to the queen. They help bats outside their families too. That's what makes their lifestyle possible. Blood is mostly water, so vampire bats need to feed a lot every night to survive. But they don't always eat enough blood in a night. Every evening they fly out is a leap of faith. But they can make that leap, because if they don't get enough, other bats will feed them. They regurgitate any extra blood they get into the mouths of other, hungrier bats. They remember who returns the kindness and who doesn't. Within their caves, they create networks of social support.

“That's why they can survive on a low-calorie, unreliable food source. That's why they can keep flying out every night.” Mom reached over and squeezed my hand. “And I'm proud to have brought up a young lady whose soul can be summed up by an animal like that.”

My mind reeled. How had I never known that about vampire bats?

_Because we were too scared to look up anything about them,_ Quincy said.

“But what about the blood sucking?” I said. 

“Vampire bats don't suck blood,” Dad said. “They make a bite and lap up the blood that spills out. And yes, sometimes they'll get close to a bird by nuzzling her in the same spot her chicks would nuzzle her, so she relaxes and lets them come in for the bite. That's what they do to survive. And maybe that means you know how to get people to do what you want. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. I know what you want. You want to heal animals and make the world a better place. And some people, well, they don't see things your way. If you can get those people to do what you want – to believe in what you want – I see that as power. Power you can use well.”

My eyes, welling with tears, spilled over. “I don't deserve this.”

Dashiell rubbed his head against Quincy's neck. Mom said, “Don't deserve what?”

“You see so much in me,” I said, my vision blurring. “I can't live up to that. I _haven't_ lived up to that.”

Mom wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “You're so young, and you've already learned so much. You'll learn more, in time.”

I didn't have time to make youthful mistakes. Not when there were lives in the balance. But my parents didn't know that. So I leaned against my mother and cried, not because I hated Quincy's form or because I was ashamed, but because the world demanded so much of me, and I could give back so little. 

Mom showed me pictures of vampire bats while Dad made dinner. I knew what Quincy looked like, of course, but it was cool to see pictures of them in flight through the night sky, roosting in small colonies in their caves, and carrying around their babies on their backs. 

Dinner was my favorite: mushroom risotto. Dad had pulled out all the stops, cooking the rice in homemade vegetable stock. We ate earlier than usual, so that there was still plenty of light in the sky when we finished washing up. 

“Get your hiking shoes on,” Dad said. “We're going for a walk in the park.”

That's always been Dad's little joke, referring to the national park like it was a well-trimmed city park that people go for strolls in. The three of us have hiked the park's toughest trails. I went up to my room and changed into my hiking boots. 

I love hiking with my dad. I love it with my mom too, of course, but it's special with Dad because Emeraude is completely at home in the forest in a way she rarely is anywhere else. On the city streets, she disrupts foot traffic, her bulk dwarfing pedestrians and cars alike. Very few buildings can hold her. But in the woods, she doesn't have to worry about traffic or ceilings. She's just herself.

Quincy launched off my shoulder and flew beside me as we hiked uphill. This trail was less familiar than some of the rest, but I still recognized landmarks: a fallen log, a clump of wildflowers, a fir where we'd seen a spotted owl once. Then, near the end, my parents started to veer off the trail.

“Uh, are you sure it's OK to go this way?” I said. We've gone off-trail before, but only with great caution.

“Don't worry,” Mom said. “We've been this way before.”

Emeraude's hooves were sure on the rocks and slick rotting leaves. I followed her. The trees grew sparser as we climbed. Finally, we emerged on a bluff as the sun began to slip beneath the horizon. Ahead of me, my parents stood at the edge of the bluff, where a rocky overhang jutted out over the forest below. I joined them.

Dad took my right hand and Mom took my left. Quincy landed on Emeraude's head, next to Dashiell's usual perch. 

“Now is the hour of the bat,” Mom said, “and Cassandra and Quintavion call upon the bat as their guide into the fullness of adulthood.”

“Quintavion calls upon the bat,” said Emeraude, “who has given him shape and new purpose.”

“Cassandra calls upon the bat,” Dad said, “who will reveal to her her path as a woman.”

Somewhere below the rocky overhang, the evening’s first bats began to emerge from their colony’s roost, spreading their wings to catch the night breeze. I saw them silhouetted against the sky, fiery with sunset. My breath caught. They weren’t vampire bats – they don’t live in North America – but I was forcibly reminded of how beautiful they were. It was a beauty that I hadn’t yet been able to see in Quincy.

“They call upon your sureness, your wings’ steady beat through the night air,” said Dashiell.

“They call upon your kinship, your gathering together in the fastness of your roost,” said Mom.

“They call upon your clarity, your vision that echoes in even the deepest dark,” said Emeraude.

“They call upon your freedom, your flight that lets you wander anywhere,” said Dad.

The remainder of the sunlight was dimmed by hundreds of small shapes taking to the sky. The sound of wingbeats filled the gathering dark.

“And now they make their own plea, to ask you where they would be guided,” said Mom. She turned to me.

I quailed. My parents had already said so much. I didn’t know what else to add. Where did I want to go that I needed guidance to get there?

Finally, Quincy spoke. “Guide me to the hearts of my enemies.”

Dad nodded and smiled. That was the power I had, that he’d spoken about earlier. I wasn’t sure yet if I could change the hearts of my enemies. But the least I could do was come to know them, before I had to destroy them.

**Marco**

It was the dream again. 

My mother was in her usual chair, book open in her lap, gently scratching Mercurio's chin. Except it wasn't her. It was Visser One whose fingers pressed between dense black feathers, Visser One who leaned into the touch with soft churring noises. Standing before them, ghostly, were my real mother and my real sire, staring and shivering as touch was taken away from them, perverted by a Yeerk who used it only to keep up the facade of humanity. The ghosts of my mom and her dæmon didn’t touch each other. They couldn’t, not by their own choice, not until the next time Visser One went to feed.

I was in bed. My mother came to tuck me in, but it wasn’t her. She pulled the covers to my chin and whispered goodnight. Diamanta was curled up on the floor as a fuzzy little wombat. Mercurio reached out with a flipper and stroked her. But it wasn’t Mercurio. The real Mercurio was a ghost standing in the doorway. It was Visser One. Visser One was touching Diamanta. She was _touching_ her. The ghosts Mercurio and Mom watched, hollow-eyed, as the monster who’d enslaved them touched Dia, like she had the _right._

“Stop,” I moaned, too sick at heart to even scream. “Please, stop, get off her. She doesn’t want you to do that. She wants my sire to do that. You don’t belong there. She’s not yours!”

I woke up. Diamanta was wombat-formed on the floor, squirming and thrashing as if a thousand cockroaches were crawling all over her. A second later, she woke, but she kept squirming, to get the phantom sensation off her. It didn’t work. We knew too well what it felt like. The alien touch lingered. 

“It’s worse than cockroaches, though,” said Dia in a tiny voice, as she became a hummingbird and flew up onto the bed. “It burns. Like acid from someone else’s vomit, but you can’t wipe it off. And the hands, rubbing it deeper into your – ”

“We need to get out of here,” I said flatly. “We need to do something. We’re not going to sleep and I don’t want to spend hours staring at the ceiling thinking about _that_.”

Dia snorted. “What’s the point? We’ll keep thinking about it no matter what we do.”

“Not if there’s someone to distract us,” I said. I rolled out of bed, changed into my morphing outfit, and opened the window. I focused on the owl and began to shrink.

“It’s two in the morning,” Dia said. “He’ll be grumpy.”

“Well, duh.”

“What if he tells to fuck off so he can go back to sleep?” said Dia, just before she disappeared into the morph.

_He won’t,_ I said. _He’s Jake._

We flew. The image of my mother’s ghost watching as Visser One stroked Dia’s fur played on repeat in my brain, but I knew the way to Jake’s house so well, both on foot and on the wing, that I got there without having to think about it. I landed on the edge of his window and rapped lightly at the glass with my beak.

Merlyse, curled up with Jake on the bed as a coyote, woke instantly. Her ears pricked and swiveled toward the window. Jake pushed back the covers, got up, and opened the window. They had their leader faces on, both of them, his features tight and composed and her eyes piercing me with yellow keenness. “What’s wrong?” he said.

«Nothing,» I said. «I want to play some hoops.»

The leader face evaporated. Now he just looked confused. “Hoops?”

«Yeah. Basketball. The courts by the community center aren’t fenced.»

“Marco,” Jake said, lowering his voice to a little above a whisper. “It’s two in the morning.”

«I know.» I felt a pang of disappointment and, if I’m being honest with myself, loneliness. But I forced myself to say, «You know what, forget it. I’m sorry I woke you up. I’ll go home.»

Merlyse made a soft sound in her throat. “Wait,” Jake said. His hands tightened on the windowsill. “Demorph behind the trees in my backyard. I’ll bring my basketball and some shoes.” 

Relief electrified me. I felt alive again. I hadn’t even realized how dead I’d felt until that moment. I glided down from the window and demorphed in Jake’s backyard. When I came around to the front, he was waiting. His shoes were too big for me, but he brought thick socks so my feet would fill them out better. 

We walked toward the community center. The streets were empty, but that didn’t creep me out. I’m used to the way my city looks at night. Besides, I know better than anyone that far worse things can happen behind closed doors than anything that goes on in a dark and silent street.

“So,” I said. “Seen any good TV lately?”

Jake was startled for a second, so much that he nearly dropped the basketball tucked under his arm. Then he got it. All of us want to be distracted sometimes. Usually I’m happy to be the distraction, but this time it was his turn.

The corner of Jake’s mouth twitched up. “Actually, my dad taped the Saturday Night Live from last weekend, and there was this skit with Will Ferrell in a bear costume…”

**Jake**

I used to spend Saturday mornings in my pajamas, eating cereal in front of the TV with Tom, watching cartoons. Tom doesn’t do lazy mornings anymore. There’s always something going on at the Sharing. As for me, this Saturday morning, I strapped on my sneakers and went outside, a printout of Cassie’s emailed directions to Delia Nguyen’s house clasped in my hand.

“To tell you the truth,” Merlyse muttered, walking beside me as a scruffy dun-colored horse, “I’d rather be watching cartoons. Or even better, in bed.”

“You have a point there,” I conceded. I’d barely gotten any sleep during the extended train-wreck that was David and the world leaders’ summit – and damn if that didn’t feel like a year instead of less than a week – then Marco had come over, sounding as desperate and raw as he had when he thought his mom had died, asking him to come play basketball at two in the morning. I was happy to be there for him, of course, but after all that sleep deprivation it took a lot out of me. The two nights since then, I’d had to stay up late to catch up on all the work I’d fallen behind on in the last week. “But I can take a nap later, Merl. This is important. I mean…” _We ought to be there for Cassie and Rachel. We ought to look at the grave of the boy we murdered. It’s only right._

“Yeah,” said Merl. I reached out and tangled my fingers in her uneven mane.

When we got to Delia’s house, I rang the doorbell. It was answered by a young woman with a silky sheet of black hair past her shoulders and a wrinkly Shar Pei dæmon. Of course, she was a being far stranger than she looked, unique in all the galaxy: a symbiosis of a Yeerk and a Chee. “Hello, Jake,” she said. “Come in.”

Merl changed from a horse to a tortoise, and we followed Delia in. Her house was just as normal as the Kings’, if much smaller and shabbier. My dad would have called it a fixer-upper that just needed a handyman’s touch. The smell of grout came from the bathroom, and paint thinner from behind another door. But there was nothing ramshackle about the elevator behind her basement door that brought us down into her private doggy paradise.

We were immediately swarmed by dogs, who threw themselves at my legs and sniffed Merlyse’s shell. I petted as many as I could reach. It’s hard not be cheered up by dogs. Their attitude toward life is infectious. Delia got on her knees and pressed her nose to theirs. They smiled and licked her face. I wondered, vaguely, if Aftran enjoyed it too, or just took it as a part of her life sharing a body with a Chee.

Cassie and Rachel were already there. I could see them talking in the shade of a tree. Abineng was still in that antelope form, Rachel’s arm curled around his dark neck. Behind them, I saw a stone rising up from the earth. The grave marker. That sobered me right up. I left the dogs behind, though a few of them still trailed after me. Merl became the scruffy desert horse again, and I quickened my pace.

“And then my dad lit some candles and tried to sing a psalm,” I could hear Rachel saying. “You know, from the Torah. It’s about when King David’s dæmon, Adara, settled. It’s a Jewish tradition to sing it for a settling, but my dad hasn’t been to synagogue in, like, ever, so he forgot half the words and just hummed through the parts he forgot. It was so embarrassing. Oh, hi, Jake.”

“So you told your parents?” I said.

“Yeah. My dad flew in. Big celebration.” Rachel grimaced. “They kept telling me how proud they were, and reminiscing about their own settlings. I think Dad was a little disappointed, though. It costs a lot more to book tickets on planes for people with big dæmons. My chances of coming to visit him are approaching zero.”

I studied Rachel. I’m not an expert at reading people like Cassie, but I know my cousin. I saw the way her fingers ran through Abi’s mane. She was embarrassed by the way her parents reacted. She felt as if she didn’t deserve the big fuss they’d made. But on the most fundamental level, she was at peace with the way she’d settled.

“Have you thought about what this means?” Rachel said to me. “For our missions, I mean.”

At first I didn’t know what she was talking about. But then I looked at Abi, really looked. He’s big. Hard to overlook. Can’t fit in tight corners.

“I see what you mean,” I said. It was an advantage, too, in that Rachel could defend herself out of morph against just about any human, especially if she kept up her self-defense classes with Mike. But we don’t fight out of morph. When we’re human and we’re on a mission, we want to hide. I turned to Cassie. “Does the Gardens have a sable antelope?”

“No, but there’s a zoo not too far away that does,” she said. 

“One of us will acquire it,” I said, “and use it in a couple of missions. That way, if the Yeerks see a sable antelope when you demorph to heal, they’ll assume it’s one of us in a battle morph.”

“That still doesn’t help when I have to demorph in a tight place,” Rachel said.

“I know. We’ll just have to be careful. I’ll keep you out of situations where you might have to do that.” I couldn’t guarantee that, and Rachel knew it. But she nodded. She just wanted to make sure I kept it in mind. I could do that much.

Rachel leaned back against the tree. “So, how about you, Cassie? How’d it go?”

“How’d what go?” I said.

Cassie and Rachel exchanged a look. I had a feeling it might be a “boys are so stupid” look.

“You haven’t looked at Quincy lately?” Rachel said. “What kind of boyfriend are you?”

I opened my mouth to say that I wasn’t Cassie’s boyfriend, but then I worried that Cassie might take that the wrong way, so I closed my mouth and looked away. Merl, though, peered at Quincy. _He’s a bat,_ she said. _Come to think of it, he’s been a bat a lot lately._

I glanced back at Cassie, startled. Both of them settling at the same time? It wasn’t a coincidence. This experience – this murder – had affected them deeply. It shouldn’t have surprised me. It was Cassie who planned it out, and Rachel who dealt the killing blow. Some part of me wished I could have shielded them from that, but that wasn’t fair to either of them. They could have let me take the responsibility, but they chose this burden. I’d have to let them bear it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have – ”

“It’s all right,” Cassie said. “I didn’t want to believe it myself. I had some hang-ups about vampire bats. Still do, but I’m working on it.” 

Quincy bared sharp fangs. Merl became a fly and buzzed around his mouth, inspecting them. I didn’t know what to make of it. All I knew about vampire bats came from Goosebumps books.

Cassie said, “I’ll tell you more about it, but first we should do what we came here for.” She knelt in the grass in front of the grave marker. Rachel sat to her right, knees drawn up to her chest. Abi touched the tip of his nose on the top of her head. I knelt at Cassie’s left, and put a hand on the shoulder where Quincy wasn’t.

The grave marker was plain, uncarved stone. It was pale and glittered with bits of quartz. Delia must have etched in the epitaph, because the letters were neat and crisp.

DAVID FINLEY

1984 – 1998

There was nothing more. Delia and Aftran didn’t know him, after all. Perhaps to them, he was just another victim of our war. To us, though, he would always be more than that.

After a moment of silence, Rachel said, “I don’t regret what we did. I mean, I regret voting to give him the morphing power in the first place. But I don’t regret killing him. I can’t. Rapists are supposed to go to prison. That’s the way justice works. I get that. But there’s no prison that can hold an Animorph. Our justice was the only one with any power over him.”

“Justice?” said Cassie. “Is that what this is?”

“No,” said Rachel. “But real justice doesn’t work anymore when you’re at war. David was a rabid dog. He raped Marco, he almost killed Jake, and he would have hurt my family if we hadn’t killed him. So I don’t regret it.” She gave Cassie a level, almost defiant look, while Abi bared his teeth at David’s grave.

“I know that,” Cassie said. “I wouldn’t have planned it that way if I thought there was anything else we could do. But I can’t help but think, what if? What if we’d treated him differently? What if we’d broken the news more gently? What if we’d let him stay with the Chee instead of sleeping in my barn? I can’t help but regret.”

“If we’d let him stay with the Chee, then he’d have had even more valuable secrets to sell to Visser Three,” I said. 

“I know,” sadi Cassie, “but maybe he wouldn’t have sold us out at all. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so resentful of us, so angry. What if we’d waited until after the big mission to give him the morphing power, so we could focus on teaching him how to use it? What I’m trying to say is – are we sure he was a bad person? Or did we and the Yeerks turn him into one?”

Rachel shook her head. “No, Cassie. It’s one thing to want to use the morphing power for yourself. I can see why that’s tempting. I can even see why David might have tried to sell us out to Visser Three to save his parents. Maybe he really thought he could cut a deal. But what he did to Marco? What he almost did to my sister? That had nothing to do with being scared and alone and confused. That had everything to do with wielding power over us. It was about fucking with us just because he could. That’s _sick._ That’s a disease that goes deep. That’s a person who’ll use any power he has to make himself feel bigger. He was never the kind of person who should be trusted with the morphing power. We just couldn’t see it.”

It was then that I realized how lucky we were. Elfangor hadn’t known the five of us when he met us in the construction site. He took the same gamble we did when we voted on whether to use the blue box on David. But unlike us, he guessed right. All of us choose to fight the Yeerks. None of us use the morphing power to make ourselves rich or hurt people. But Elfangor had taken a huge risk. He could have unleashed five Davids on the world. Had he somehow known that we were the right kids for this war? Or had he just taken a shot in the dark and hoped for the best?

“David was a mistake,” I said. “Even if he wasn’t a nice guy before, by giving him power, we made him worse. What I want to know is what we can learn from our mistake.”

“Don’t trust anyone,” Rachel said. “Don’t forget that our families can get caught up even deeper in this war if we’re not careful.” 

“Consider the consequences of power,” Cassie said. “We have a lot more of it than we think. We used it wrongly, and a boy ended up dead by our hands. But if we can figure out how to use it right…”

I thought about Marco the other night, how the thought-speech had come out of him like blood from a wound as he asked me, in the only way he knew how, to comfort him. “I think you’re both right,” I said. “Except I have one correction, Rachel.”

Rachel looked at me over Cassie’s head. “What’s that?”

Merlyse leaned over and rested her head on Abi’s. “Don’t trust anyone _else_.” I squeezed Cassie’s shoulder. “But trust each other.”


End file.
